Art: Caricaturist

Trembling with excitement, a functionary of Manhattan’s Ferargil Galleries telephoned frantically last week:

“Ignace Jan Paderewski is on the way over from his hotel to see the exhibition and there isn’t a soul in the gallery!”

Reporters leaped for their hats, photographers jumped for their cameras, Artist Zdzislaw Czermanski was routed from his hotel room. A fleet of honking taxis bore down on 57th Street. Reporters reached the galleries just as the grey-haired Polish politico-pianist departed in a pale blue swirl of burnt gasoline. The perspiring assemblage was left to admire the pictures.

Zdzislaw Czermanski (pronounced “Zhishlaff Chairmanski”), a handsome, extremely self-possessed young man, was born in Lwow (pronounced “Wuff”), Poland, 35 years ago. His father & mother were mummers, but small Zdzislaw was only mildly interested in the theatre. He used to practice drawing caricatures by making faces at himself in a mirror. He learned much more about the human face by working for a time as a barber. During the War he enlisted in crop-headed Marshal Joseph Pilsudski’s French-subsidized Polish Legion, was wounded, mentioned in despatches, thrice taken prisoner. In 1919 he gained his first fame as a caricaturist with a pictorial biography of his former commander. European editors, unable to read the text, erroneously decided it was anti-Pilsudski in intent. Three years ago he moved to Paris to live. L’Illustration printed several of his Paris street scenes. British editors were entranced. He went to London to make a series of drawings for the Graphic. In January FORTUNE imported him to the U. S. to depict political and financial leaders. Artist Czermanski speaks no English, converses in firmly Slavic French. Even so he finds New Yorkers sympathetic, far easier to know than either Londoners or Parisians.

Only two political cartoons were shown in his first U. S. exhibition last week, The House Restaurant in Washington, and Senate—The Republican Cloakroom. Of the latter the New York Evening Post’s critic Margaret Bruening wrote: “It is an indictment of democratic government that is appalling, yet its poignant significance does not obscure the delightful quality of its humor.” The other cartoons shown were street scenes of Paris, New York, London and that sport of all caricaturists from Tenniel to Ralph Barton, burlesques of famed paintings. Czermanski’s is a subtle satire, the more effective because it relies so little on Distortion. He has a passion for detail. Drawing in a mixture of pencil, pastel and oil paint he builds an effective, hilarious whole by concentrating on a few minutiae: the wrinkles in Secretary Stimson’s coats, the gaunt wrists of a Park Avenue doorman, the wild hair and felt slippers of a French bistro waiter.