CULTURE

Stefan Gierowski - Paintings 1957-2000
National Museum in Poznań 11 june - 13 august 2000

Stefan Gierowski, a leading contemporary painter and, for many years, a professor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, is presently regarded as one of the most consistent Polish artists of the second half of the XX century. In 1999, he was the second recipient of the Doctor Lech Siuda Collectors Prize of Poznań.

He was born in Częstochowa, in 1925. From 1945-1948, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. His early work displayed clear influences of post-Cubist rhythmization and simplifications from the realms of naive art. Bringing this phase to a close and, at the same time, announcing a new direction in his artistic exploration was Gierowski's first solo exhibition, in Warsaw, in 1955. New elements, appearing above all in a still further loosening of formal content, were also visible in works shown in the Young Plastic Art Exhibition at the Arsenal gallery that same year. An unusually conventional "Still Life" brought him an award. The artist’s next solo exhibition, organised in Warsaw, in 1957, crystallises the moment of his arrival at a non-figurative style of painting, which thenceforth became his major field of interest. The first larger display of the painting of Stefan Gierowski took place at the Zachęta in Warsaw, in 1967; the next some 25 years later at the same venue, this time in the form of a retrospective. If it may have seemed that the exhibition from eight years age represented a résumé of this extremely valuable creativity, in the nineties the artist took observers of his painting by surprise with several new series of paintings. It is these which form the basis of the exhibition at the National Museum. In spite of the dates (1957-2000) which are given, which would appear to indicate a retrospective exhibition, it is canvases from recent years which dominate. Earlier compositions discreetly signpost the path whose culmination is some 60 paintings from the last ten years.

The exhibition presents over 90 works from the years 1957-2000, drawn from the artist's own collection, as well as from those of the Zachęta Gallery of Contemporary Art in Warsaw, the National Gallery in Poznań and private collectors. It shows how the painting of Stefan Gierowski has evolved - from tachiste-inspired works, through an enchantment with unism, to the more recent compositions constituting a play on colours, using swathes of pure colour.

The artistic work of Stefan Gierowski is among the most interesting achievements of Polish art in the second half of the XX century. Of his painting at the beginning of the nineties, Professor Mieczysław Porębski wrote thus: "Gierowski is in his painting free from everything. There is no circus, no blood and guts, no melodramatic references, no martyrological manifestations, nothing of the sort. Just the sheer courage of the artist’s procedure, covering the canvas with colours in such a way that leaves no doubts, whilst at the same time being ever new, surprising, unexpected. And thereby defiant".