Radoslav Sowiak (born 1950), checkers, 2022

Own technique (relief, oil, wood), plywood, 80 x 80 cm, signed on the back

Associated with art and the art community since the early 1970s. Art collector. Originator and co-organizer of the All-Poland Contemporary Art Auction for the benefit of MKZ Solidarność Ziemi Łódzkiej (1981). Co-owner, with Adam Paczkowski, of the only independent and self-financing underground gallery in Poland during martial law, Czyszczenie Dywanów (Carpet Cleaning) (from March 20, 1982 to December 13, 1982). Co-organizer of the gallery's subsequent artistic actions: Poland's first private tennis tournament for the Konopnica Grand Prix (1984); the underground publishing house Zakaz Zawracania, which published unique books and the magazine Mersapon where Paczkowski and Sowiak described their subsequent artistic actions. Co-founder of the Social Protest Art Institute (1983), with temporary headquarters in Copenhagen, through which, among other things, he became a person under investigation by the security organs of the People's Republic of Poland (in free Poland he was granted the status of an aggrieved person by the IPN). Since 1986 he has been engaged in his own artistic work (painting, informel, photography). In 2011, the Museum of Art in Lodz held an exhibition called Cleaning the Carpets, summarizing the activities of Paczkowski and Sowiak as art dealers, gallery owners and artists.