Szał (Frenzy), Władysław Podkowiński (c. 1893)

Szał (Frenzy), Władysław Podkowiński (1893) Władysław Podkowiński’s Szał (Frenzy) is a storm of passion, violence, and unrestrained energy. A nude, flame-haired woman clings to the neck of a black, foaming horse, her eyes closed as if surrendering to ecstasy or terror. The horse rears in a frenzy, teeth bared, nostrils flaring, its wild mane entangled with the woman’s hair. Light sears the figures against a vortex of shadow, pulling the viewer into a world where desire and destruction are inseparably bound. When first exhibited in Warsaw in 1894, Szał provoked both scandal and fascination. Crowds swarmed to see the shocking spectacle, and critics condemned its raw eroticism and psychological intensity. Yet the painting’s power lay precisely in its defiance of restraint—it embodied the Symbolist spirit, where inner turmoil erupts onto canvas with unsettling force. For Podkowiński, who died tragically young, Szał became both his masterpiece and his most notorious legacy: a vision of beau