Culture Minister Changed Poland’s Representative at the Venice Biennale

We will not delight the world with a project Polish exercises on the tragedy of the world. Between Germany and Russia. The problem is that we will repeat such exercises for a long time (to pain) in the country. Well, but a simple minister with the rank of lieutenant colonel does not have to know this. 

Ignacy Czwartos' paintings - as Jerzy Nowosielski once said - are perfectly "abstract". Although clean in its species, it is extremely "warm", emotional. Economical in form, even scanty, with a faded colour tone, there is some peace in them, for some - spirituality, for others - lyricism. They are compared to the painting tradition, which Kazimierz Malewicz began with his "Black Square on a White Background".
The fourth began to paint abstractions while in college, but his "artistic" beginnings were portraits referring to the tradition of coffin portrait. He does not hide the fact that Polish sepulcral art has always made a huge impression on him, and his abstractions are largely derived from Sarmatian coffin portraits painted on plate. Besides, from black and white tombstone photography. He applied his first portraits on a black background, referring to domestic 17th-century painting. Hence the muted colours, taken - according to Czwartos - from nature. The silver sheet metal replaced with soiled white, the form began to simplify, entering the abstraction area. Tired of it, he returned to the portrait again, but in a different way: he tries to combine tradition with abstraction. The effects can be seen in the Open Studio in Krakow, where, in addition to pure abstraction, he exhibits images of nuns: as it should be, serious, in black habits and hieratic poses, but surrounded by frames of painted abstraction. 

Painted paintings require more attention than media images. This is strange, given the incredible statistical advantage of the latter. They are everywhere, they are imaginative, they are accurate, despite this, a painting painted (better or worse) signed by someone, when we happen to look at it without haste, attracts attention much more. May this state of affairs last as long as possible in the culture of the 21st century.

The Ministry of Culture is confidently crackling under the pressure of advisers demanding immediate changes. The Ministry of Culture is specific, because unlike, for example, the Ministry of Health or National Defense, immediately announces that it undertakes the administration of an area independent of the state, an area in which the state with too much need to introduce its own, clear order can become very promissed. 

The minister is flying in front of his eyes snapshots from TVP, and then from PAP, and from TAI, that he certainly did not look at the pictures of Ignacy Czwartos. He listened to the advisers. The advisors had a lot of strong "substantive" arguments for changing the project representing Poland at the next Venice Biennale.  

This decision is a political mistake. It was much better to allow both the curators and the entire (not of a small) community to show their tragic fairy tale about sincere Polishness, badly damaged against the background of the canals and the Venetian lagoon. You could see what interest it arouses, how it opens your eyes, awakens conscience, lifts your hair. Instead, we will listen to disputes and reproases of political censorship for years. 

Ignacy Czwartos is not a bad painter, he is a controversial painter, he put a lot of effort into being one. It is a pity that he will not have the opportunity to see if the world crowd walking in the heat of the Venetian pavilions will notice his "controversy". 

The cery of this efficiently lost idea was "tragic". Our familiar, unfaltable tragedy, always "in between", "in wischen", "in between". Tragism is our export hit since at least the Kościuszkowska Uprising. 

Would something like this be noticed in Venice in 2024? The chort one knows. Perhaps Professor von Aschenbach still knew, but apparently his heart could not stand the thought that he would not be able to look directly at Polishness in its pure form. And all this on the Venetian beach. The advisors certainly didn't remember it. 

Whether Czwartos is a good painter can only be determined by spending a private moment in front of his paintings. Arguments evoked by critics (e.g. Piotr Kosiewski in "Tygodnik Powszechny") are worth remembering. Kosiewski (not without reason) spots layers of "earthly mate" on Czwartos's canvases. Whether it's realism or cheesy, again for years we will discuss only in a country with entangled in non-embrossical, political views.

If such an emotional, "memorable discussion" could lead to the fact that they would meet in one picture, they would come across each other clearly, as on the icon shown, the "holy" scarf of the Kielce Crown and the "authentic" bag in rainbow colours. 

 None of this, such images will continue to flash us separately not only in the media. 

 And this will be the measure of the failure of the Ministry of Culture.

https://artinfo.pl/pl/blog/relacje/wpisy/ignacy-czwartos-malarstwo-otwarta-pracownia2/