Anna Dębska's works are stunning with their directness. Her style and technique have no equivalent in sculpture. He moves us with the emotion of his vision of the beauty of the life of horses and other animals.

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Anna Dębska's sculptures use a wide variety of materials and various sculpting techniques. From sketch techniques, nervously and quickly modeled in clay, and then fixed in fired ceramics or cast in bronze, to monumentally smooth and strongly simplified forms in artificial stone, concrete or precise bronze casting. Sculptures in concrete techniques are the most monumental. This is not a continuation of the forms of stone sculpture with its craftsmanship requirements and traditional difficulties, often insurmountable in the sculpture of animals, especially horses. The thinness of the legs supporting the great mass of the animal had to be supplemented with these or other elements of supports artificially related to the subject of the sculpture. This was the case with stone - meanwhile, the monolithic nature of reinforced concrete makes it possible to thin the limbs of heavy animals to a minimum, giving their weights lightness, greater than that achieved in bronze.

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The horse is the love of the author. The richness and variety of horse sculptures in her work are thrilling. From romping foals to tragic, dramatically composed groups of horses, from lightly and gracefully jumping ponies to strong, massive, heavy Percherons in their momentum. We know many artists who devoted their work to this most beautiful of animals. But usually in their work they limited themselves to one kind or type of horse.

Images of horses are present in our native art, perhaps painting rather than sculpting. Be it Michałowski and Juliusz Kossak, Chełmoński or Brandt, or finally our contemporaries, the horse appears as an animal related to man. As its complement. The same in the monumental sculptures of even such a contemporary master as Marino Marini, the figure of the horse is the basis for the rider. Anna Dębska, who herself is an excellent rider and is passionate about her own horses, was able to see the beauty of horses freely, freed from saddles and harnesses, freely expressing their mutual feelings, moving lightly without any constraints or burdens. If the author also happens to present a rider on a horse, then the rider taking the obstacle is just a small, dynamic, "unimportant" addition justifying the horse's movement in the jump.

But the strongest dramatic experiences give us Foam Horses. Here the author showed all the ability to extract beauty in the maximum effort of the animal. And despite the great dynamics of the composition, the juxtaposition of these three animals full of movement creates a monumental composition wonderfully composed into a frozen static block, worthy of a monument not only on horseback, but a monument for our horses, which accompanied us in the last great spurt in the tragic struggle of our September.

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Author: Jerzy Hryniewiecki

The entire publication and other sources can be found in the Polish Digital Equestrian Library (click)

Below you will find links to related materials in the Polish Digital Equestrian Library.