Hardly any of the Schulz drawings could do without this background: small houses of different forms and sizes appear not only in the usual street scenes, but squeeze themselves into the drawing even if no one would expect them to be there. Dull nooks, bedrooms with heavy curtains – and in one of the corners the secret places are unveiled, the houses appear. Sometimes they are drawn very schematically, but their presence is apparent - sometimes this presence is even stressed upon deliberately.

At first glance it seems that such scene against the townscape is only imitation of Italian baroque painters. But in paintings of Giorgone and Titian landscapes are not involved in the main action, they resemble rather arras than real places – they are mere decorations of the main scene and can be easily changed. Schulz drawings are different: it seems as if little town pries constantly into secret places and eyes personages. Buildings are sketched schematically, with the few inattentive hatches – one has the impression that artist wants to get rid of them, diminish their role in the drawn scene. But they – against his will – stubbornly swarm into the drawing. Heavyset and frail, with and without windows, the houses examine girls and schulzes. They whisper and prattle about the personages in forefront.

It is due to this intrusive architecture that each of Schulz drawings possesses theatrical atmosphere – actors-people on the stage and spectators-houses in the crowd behind. Special effect is achieved by means of Schulz’s perspective – people are much bigger than houses, their heads-masks make more than half of their figure. The importance is measured by size: first - actor’s mime, then – his posture, then – town’s houses as decoration, or rather – crowd scene: What does this permanent stress on the little town – Schulz’s Drohobych – mean? Is this the ever presence of little town’s eye? Do houses symbolize Drohobych crowd? May be. Those non-drawn people in the houses are different from the people outside. Those, who are outside – on the stage of Schulz’s theatre – are as if under the hail of eyes-bullets, under the fire of condemnation. Those inside can do nothing except keep the others outside under annoying and constant surveillance. That is why they are present in the drawings as houses (rarely – as faces looking out from the windows) – they are people, who are not able to go outside, they are attached to the walls; they and their fortresses are twins. Schulz associates himself with those outside (numerous self-portraits in the streets) and with those inside (his project of the cover for his book of stories – the author looks out of the window).

The impression that houses seem to annoy Schulz enormously crosses the mind immediately. Even on his self-portrait with easel he represents himself as Gulliver among Lilliputian cabins of dark Drohobych. But if this little town had tormented him really beyond his endurance with its constant prying wouldn’t he have ventured upon the decisive step and wouldn’t he have left this town? Though such plans were tumbling about in his brain, he never fulfilled them. Perhaps, this annoyance and espial created that only possible for him atmosphere of existence – constant discomfort, dissatisfaction and disappointment. If only one beam of escape, liberation and joy had shone in his macabre life everything would have been ruined. Schulz would not have realized himself.

Time of the day for Schulz are twilights, when day is dying and night myths are being born, when dark monsters are awaited. And it is against this waiting that Schulz’s feelings and emotions flourish. Horrible monsters are to come from behind the small houses, from narrow and winding little streets. But they are still hiding. Only small houses know about them. They know, but they are quiet and happy that their silence can cause such a terror. The painter sketches walls, roofs, and chimneys in haste – the houses melt away in the darkness: in the darkness in which twilight monsters are born. All these awkward encounters, unsuccessful courtships, humiliating conversations, which happen to personages in the forefront are nothing else but premonition of coming fears – the danger comes from behind of the houses. Insensitive houses-spectators make the last curtain, which protects drawing’s personages from the imminent danger. The curtain will fall and the tragedy will come to its end. But until it has not fallen alarming anticipation continues. Schulz’s world is situated in this twilight interval when everyone knows about fatal danger but there has been no thunderbolt – that final chord before the end – yet. This very interval, which was whole Schulz’s life, bears very strange fruits. This moment before the end was very short, but at the same it was time enormously prolific – myths-conjectures interweave, traditional morality crushes under the pressure of sick imagination, little town chimeras crawl heading to the darkness.

Schulz is only possible in the retinue of these dumb messengers of disaster – houses-observers. Schulz is an infection, one can be ill with him, but he cannot be admired – it would be pathology. One can only whisper about him and become thus similar to his townscapes, standing in the middle of Drohobych square and dumbly observing this freak, his next convulsion.