Signed on reverse on canvas: 2017 | E. DWURNIK | NR: XXV [in frame] - 389 [in frame] | 7067 [in frame, next to sign of crossed arrows], below: 389 [in frame].
"Cycle XXV" was Dwurnik's complete break with representational painting. The artist, inspired by the work of Jackson Pollock and his working method (he visited Pollock's studio on Long Island), gave himself over to the joy of creation. As Boguslaw Deptuła writes, in the introduction to the 2018 Sopot exhibition catalog: 'The authenticity of the space on the one hand, and the unlimited freedom afforded by such a mode of personal expression on the other, may have determined his decision to turn to this side after years of making up the posts, practiced in the form of inserting uncountable windows in the facades of buildings that had to be painted on a thousand city views. It's an overly seductive art for a painter enslaved to his own painting method: pouring, splashing, splashing, smearing, throwing, overflowing, splashing. Perhaps this is just the absolute freedom he experienced in his personal and probably overly intense contact with the works and the place.
Recalling his first paintings from the "Hitchhiking Travels" series, Dwurnik thought years later that they were almost abstract, very precisely constructed, evenly saturated. In turn, he said of his new abstractions: When I saturate the abstractions now, when I splash them, paint them, when I pour paint on them, I go back to those first paintings, but today I have it much easier, because there is no longer that tension, that burden, that I have to tell something, that I have to be involved in some righteous cause. This statement by Edward Dwurnik was included in an interview with Anna Maria Potocka, on the occasion of the Thanks to Jackson exhibition at Bunkier Sztuki in Cracow in 2005, which featured a large presentation of Dwurnik's abstract paintings.
♣ a fee will be added to the auctioned price in addition to other costs, based on the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)
Edward Dwurnik (Radzymin 19 IV 1943 - Warsaw 28 X 2018) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (1963-1970), but cites Nikifor as his "master." It was his works, seen for the first time in 1965, that inspired the then third-year student to draw his first works in the series "Hitchhiking Journeys," which he has continued to this day. In 1972-1978, the series "Sportsmen" was created, in which were portrayed, we should add - bitingly, typical figures of the 1970s. In parallel, from 1975, the series "Workers" was created, which culminated in the period of "Solidarity" 1980-1981. For the works of this series Dwurnik received in 1981 the Art Criticism Award named after Cyprian Kamil Norwid. Cyprian Kamil Norwid Art Criticism Award, while for his paintings from the series "Warsaw" (1981), prophetically foreshadowing martial law - he received the Cultural Award of the "Solidarity" underground in 1983. In the 1980s Dwurnik's painting took on expressive and dramatic expression. The paintings created in this decade often had a political meaning, they also took on a historical costume, in one way or another referring to contemporary issues and realities. The series "Road to the East" (1989-91) commemorated the victims of Stalinism, while the series "From December to June" (1990-94) - the victims of martial law. Both the ideological and purely painterly qualities of these works brought the artist great recognition, both at home and abroad. Its expression was the prestigious award of the Coutts & Co Foundation in Zurich (1992). In the 1990s, series are created as a continuation of "Hitchhiking Journeys": "Blue Cities" (from 1993) and "Diagonals" (from 1996), as well as compositions of a new type, such as sea views (the "Blue" series, 1992-93) and the "Enumeration" series (1996-99). The artist has exhibited extensively, has had about 100 solo exhibitions in Poland and abroad, and has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions and festivals, including: the 10th Biennale of Contemporary Art, Menton 1974, Documenta 7, Kassel 1982, the 5th Biennale, Sydney 1985, the 19th Art Biennale, Sao Paulo 1987; the Olympics of Art, Seoul 1988. Parallel to painting, he practiced drawing, collage, printmaking (lithography, metal techniques, xerography, stamps) and applied graphics (illustration, posters for his own solo exhibitions).
