Wojciech Ćwiertniewicz Man or Stone or Tree
Opening: May 23th, 2014, at 7.30 p.m.
Centre for Creative Activities, Ustka
The exhibition will be open till June 29th, 2014.
Wojciech Ćwiertniewicz was born in 1955. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow in the years 1976-1981. He is a laureate of the Cyprian Kamil Norwid Artistic Critics Award, and the “Exit” Magazine 2008 Award. His works belong to several public collections, including the National Museum in Cracow, the High Silesia Museum in Bytom, and the Main Library of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. He has exhibited his works at 61 solo painting exhibitions and taken part in over a hundred group exhibitions. He published seven volumes of his diary: The Painter’s Diary (ed. Artistic Association Otwarta Pracownia [Open Studio], Cracow 2002), Untitled (Cracow 2004), Długa Street (Cracow 2005), Untitled 2 (Cracow 2006), Year 2006 (Cracow 2007), 2007 (Cracow 2008), 2008 (Cracow 2009).
Soon after his graduation Ćwiertniewicz has painted mainly figurative pictures in the so-called new expression style (portraits, nudes and interior compositions), which often referred to the motives of old art in a postmodernist way. Secret gardens, luxurious vegetation and hot night atmosphere have appeared in his paintings of the time. In 1986 he presented these pictures at the exhibition Expression of the Eighties in Sopot; they were painted in the trans-avant-garde style and inspired with pictures by René Magritte and Henri Matisse. At the end of the 80s new accents appeared in his art; this included exotic forest landscapes filled with fantastic luxuriant vegetation, under the impression of which he remained after his trip to Madera. His paintings of the time were dominated by archaism and original natural forces. In the beginning of the next decade his compositions included clearly divided zones of the Earth and the sky, referring to the mood of cosmic landscapes. Then, in the first decade of the 21st century, the painter returned to figurative scenes, including male nudes. In 2002 he surprised the public with very bold pictures representing male nudes. In 2007 these works stood as candidates for taking part in Venice Biennale. Some critics consider Ćwiertniewicz the first artist in Polish painting history, who truly sees, feels and renders man’s body in its fullness. He doesn’t shun abstractive painting; the motive of circle/wheel has often appeared in it, having the symbolic meaning for the painter. Wheels and circles are scattered throughout his canvases, referring to the form of mandala. The artist doesn’t give titles to his pictures; he gives them solely numbers.