Mountain landscape

Mountain Landscape from 1903, now in the National Museum in Warsaw, suggests that Ślewiński had expanded his landscape subjects beyond the Breton coast — perhaps to the mountains of southern France, or possibly to southern Poland or the Tatras during a return visit to his homeland. The mountain subject required a fundamentally different compositional approach from the horizontal expanses of the sea — vertically assertive, with strong diagonals and a sense of ascending mass that the flat Atlantic coast could not provide. Ślewiński's Synthétist approach, with its emphasis on simplified outlined forms, was well suited to the clear geometric masses of mountain terrain.

Mountain forms — their angular planes, sharp ridges, and clear atmospheric recession — provide Ślewiński with ideal material for the Synthétist approach to landscape. Strong contour lines define the main masses, with colour fills that simplify the natural complexity of rock and vegetation into organised, harmonious pictorial areas.