Great artists most often did not venture into the mountains (hence the reputation of the latter being inaccessible or untamed) — they preferred the city to the countryside. Lemko Region once experienced this, including Nowica, from which the future poet and Lviv resident Bohdan Ihor Antonych had to part ways in his infancy. Sometimes, however, the deep meaning of parting is returning…

As in one’s own home, on October 19, the greatest iconographer of the 20th century — the Krakow resident Jerzy Nowosielski (1923–2011) — visited Nowicki No. 95. This was possible thanks to the Nowycia Foundation, the organizer of the meeting “Body-Icon-Eschatology”. The enigmatic title concealed a screening of the film “Jerzy Nowosielski — Orthodox bacillus in a Catholic home” and a subsequent discussion. This latest production, lasting almost 45 minutes, dedicated to the Painter owes the most to the Lemko Union, which in this way honored the 100th anniversary of the Artist’s birth.

Nowosielski’s icon shows what we will look like after deification — said Bogdan Huk during the discussion. As the author of the script, in response to one of the questions, he indicated that the sacred works of the Ukrainian iconographer from Lemkoland are fully canonical. However, there was an aesthetic revolution. Nowosielski used avant-garde and abstract aesthetics, including the achievements of the neo-Byzantine style in the works of the Ukrainian artist Mykhailo Boychuk. He was able to show our body after death as a subtle being, because only absolute transformation gives the possibility of being-nearby or “seeing” God. In the bodily journey of the faithful, the icon thus appears as a sensitive intermediary between their biological life and their existence in eschatological reality.

The influence of Nowosielski’s great art proved irresistible. It was the reflection on man-in-relation to the icon that set the tone for the evening in Nowica. The suggestive message of the screen was strengthened by the fact that the scriptwriter admitted to his own experiences. Bogdan Huk gained an extreme spiritual experience from working on the film, which he summed up in the words: “The icon hanging on the wall of your home is not safe, because it is not so much penetrated by your gaze as by the presence of God, who constantly asks you only one thing: do you love?”.