Procession, from the series “Children’s poses”

Painted just one year before his death at age twenty-nine, 'Procession' belongs to Wojtkiewicz's haunting series known as 'Children's Poses' — one of the most distinctive and unsettling bodies of work in Polish art. Wojtkiewicz, who lived with a congenital heart defect that shadowed his entire adult life, transformed childhood imagery into a vehicle for existential dread and melancholy. Here, children are not innocent or carefree but become uncanny, puppet-like figures enacting rituals they barely understand, evoking the fragility of life and the inevitability of suffering. The procession as a motif carries unmistakable funerary and ceremonial weight, lending the scene an air of solemn, dreamlike theater.

Working within the currents of Expressionism and Symbolism — and anticipating Surrealism by decades — Wojtkiewicz developed a style that André Gide found compelling enough to champion at the prestigious Galerie Druet in Paris in 1907. His palette tends toward muted, chalky tones, and his figures often have the stilted, mechanical quality of marionettes or folk-art dolls. In this series, the choice of children amplifies the strangeness: innocence is stripped away, replaced by a theatrical solemnity that feels more like a memento mori than a celebration of youth. It is a deeply personal work from an artist who knew his time was short.