Poland has a deep historical bond to the sea and in modern times nowhere has been more representative of the feelings the Poles have about the sea than Gdynia. When a re-born Polish state was awarded a narrow strip of coast at Versailles, the Polish General Jozef Haller and his men rode out to Puck, just north of Gdynia and performed a ceremony which was described as a wedding to the sea.
fot: wikimedia.org
It should come as little surprise then that seascapists (artists who specialize in seascapes rather than landscapes) have been rather valued in Poland over the last century. One of those is Antoni Suchanek, who although born at the other end of the country in Rzeszow, spent most of his life in Polish Gdynia. Born in 1901, he studied at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts under the tuition of Jozef Mehoffer. His work included images of the sea but also port and shipyard landscapes. Following WWII he recorded the damage and rebuilding of the Polish shipyards along the coast. He died in 1982 and a statue was erected near his home in Orlowo in 2009
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