Stefan Gierowski: From the Stefan Gierowski Collection

Working with Professor Stefan Gierowski while preparing his exhibition was an extraordinary encounter with a cheerful and kind-hearted man — someone who had experienced a great deal in his lifetime. Born in Częstochowa in 1925, the artist grew up in Kielce before moving to Kraków to study after the Second World War. He then returned briefly to Kielce, before settling permanently in Warsaw in 1949. In the capital, he initially worked as a technical editor for the magazine “Wieś”. In 1962 he began his professional association with the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he spent thirty-four years. During his time at the Academy, he attained successive academic positions and titles. From 1975 to 1981 he served as Dean of the Faculty of Painting. In 1983 the Academy’s senate elected him rector, but the martial-law authorities opposed the appointment and prevented him from taking office. During the 1980s Professor Stefan Gierowski was involved with independent cultural circles. In 1981 he sat on the Organising Committee of the Congress of Polish Culture, whose proceedings were brutally interrupted by the declaration of martial law.

The artist now lives in Konstancin-Jeziorna, where he met Marta Skłodowska and the undersigned to talk about his life. As Professor Gierowski is a witty conversationalist, able to view many matters from a healthy distance, I hope you will read the interview with interest.

I also encourage you to read the two essays written in connection with this presentation of Professor Stefan Gierowski’s work at Atlas Sztuki. We invited two curators to contribute: representatives of generations that view the artist’s work in similar ways, although from different perspectives — Jagoda Barczyńska, head of Gallery 72 at the Chełm Museum, and Stach Szabłowski, associated with the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. As Jagoda Barczyńska writes: “Stefan Gierowski — the doyen of our contemporary age — belongs to the small group of Polish artists whose lives connect the memory of the Second Polish Republic, the experience of the tragedy of war, the iniquities of Stalinist repression, the breathing space brought by the Thaw, the utopian optimism of the 1970s, the Solidarity uprising of the following decade, and the path of transformation and reconstruction of the country’s statehood under new conditions.” According to Barczyńska, the artist creates painting “that unites contradictions and binds contrasts in the service of a single medium, forming one of the most consequential chapters of this discipline in our post-war art”. Stach Szabłowski, in turn, writes of the artist’s work: “It is an extensive, yet at the same time countable, body of work that exists simultaneously in two worlds. It belongs to the history of recent art: as early as two decades ago, reproductions of Gierowski’s works had entered popular accounts of Polish art after 1945, while his paintings hang in permanent museum displays. At the same time, Gierowski’s work belongs to the present.”

Professor Stefan Gierowski has had many exhibitions in his lifetime. For our presentation, we selected works created between 1997 and 2013. I warmly invite you to Atlas Sztuki for an encounter with the art of an outstanding Polish artist whose work, despite his having reached the age of ninety-one, “remains an open project”, as Stach Szabłowski writes.