Jerzy Duda Gracz, ŁAGÓW - PEGAZ POLSKI, 1999

70.0 x 80.0cm - oil, plate signed l.d.: DUDA GRACZ . 2422/99 .


On the back of the frame four stickers ¶:

- author's sticker filled in by hand with details of the painting and signature;

- exhibition sticker [print]: WROCŁAW MUNICIPAL MUSEUM | Jerzy Duda Gracz - Pro memoria | Wrocław collection | 8 I - 13 II 2005, museum stamp below;

- exhibition sticker [print]: Legnica Copper Museum | Jerzy Duda Gracz | Pro Memoria | Wroclaw Collection | 15.04. 2005 - 28.05. 2005, museum stamp below;

- exhibition sticker [print]: Silesian Museum in Katowice | Jerzy Duda Gracz - | Pro memoria - | Wroclaw Collection | 19.02. - 10.04.2005, museum stamp to the left.

Image exhibited:
- Jerzy Duda Gracz - Pro memoria. Wrocław Collection, City Museum of Wrocław 8 I - 13 II 2005, Silesian Museum in Katowice 19 II - 10 IV 2005, Copper Museum in Legnica 15 IV - 28 V 2005;
- Prelude. Wroclaw collection, Gallery of the Agra-Art Auction House, Warsaw 28 I - 3 III 2023;
- Polish Summer. Duda Gracz at Tichauer, Tichauer Art Gallery, Tychy 1 VII - 24 IX 2023.


Reproduced painting:
- Duda Gracz. Provincial and Municipal Images. Polish Borderlands 2000, ed. Monika Branicka, Silesian Library, Katowice 2000, p. 129, il. 58 color;
- Anna Bugajska, Sick of Poland. ICC Gallery. Duda-Gracz's provincial and municipal paintings, "Gazeta Wyborcza," August 11, 2000;
- Jerzy Duda Gracz. Pro memoria. Wrocław collection (exhibition cat.), City Museum of Wrocław, Wrocław 2005, p. 85, color illustrations, cat. no. 82;
- We, the Poles / We, the Poles / Jerzy Duda-Gracz, photo by Chris Niedenthal, [translated by Arkadiusz Belczyk], Conspero Foundation, Kraków 2011, p. 113, color ill.
- Prelude. Wroclaw collection (exhibition catalog), Agra-Art, Warsaw I 2023, p. 46, color ill., cat. no. 19;
- Polish Summer. Duda Gracz at Tichauer, Tichauer Art Gallery, Tychy VI 2023, p. 94, color ill.



Painting 2422 (Lagow - Polish Pegasus) is set in the scenery of a small provincial town, so beloved by the artist. It combines Duda Player's typical perversity in its numerous references to culturally established myths and symbols (as in his early paintings Jeźdźcy Apokalipsy czyli Fucha (Riders of the Apocalypse or Fuch) from 1977 and Babel 2 from the same year) with his fascination with the passing climate of a small town in the Lubuskie Lake District. Andrzej Osęka wrote a bit maliciously about such paintings by Duda Gracz: People like from under a beer stall act out scenes from old myths and paintings. In the painting presented here, the pegasus is a worn-out country horse, harnessed to an old wagon, and the angel sitting on the cart - the artist (?) has the physiognomy of a peasant tired of life, who seeks inspiration in a mug of beer, sitting opposite a girthy muse, riding the pegasus-horse in the opposite direction.



♣ to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, will be added a fee arising from the right of the creator and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)

Jerzy Duda Gracz (Częstochowa 1941 - Łagów 2004)- painter, illustrator, stage designer, educator. He received his diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow at the Department of Graphics in Katowice in 1968. In 1976-82 he was a lecturer at the academy, then a professor at the Silesian University in Katowice. He also taught at the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw (1992-2001).
His paintings are characterized by technical virtuosity and attention to detail. He practiced art in the broadly defined realist convention with dominant figure deformation and grotesque. He created a world of unmasking, using the language of journalism and allegory. He is the author of several major projects, including the "Transfiguration" plafond in the church in Toporovo (1995) and the "Golgotha of Jasna Gora" series in the Monastery of the Pauline Fathers in Czestochowa (2000/2001). The artist has had more than 180 solo exhibitions at home and abroad (including Berlin, London, Paris, Moscow, Rome, Vienna, Florence, Düsseldorf, Chicago, New Delhi, Munich, New York and others). He participated in about 300 national exhibitions and international presentations of Polish art. He represented Poland, among others, at the XLI Art Biennale in Venice in 1984, at the XX and XXI World Art Fairs in Cologne in 1986 and 1987, and at EXPO '92 in Seville. Jerzy Duda Player's paintings are in the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk, the Jagiellonian University Museum in Collegium Maius in Krakow, the Museum of the Earth of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the art collection at Jasna Gora in Czestochowa and other district and city museums, and in private collections, including those of W. Ochman and W. Fibak; abroad - in the collections of the Uffizi in Florence, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Ghent City Museum, the "BAWAG" Foundation in Vienna and the Vatican Collection, as well as in the galleries and collections of Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Israel, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA, Venezuela, the UK, Italy and Hungary.