Wojciech Ćwiertniewicz (b. 1955), Untitled (26), 1989

Acrylic, canvas, 130 x 130 cm, signed and dated p.d.: Ćwiertniewicz '89 and on the reverse: 26 VI/89

Wojciech Ćwiertniewicz studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow in 1976-1981. In 1987, he received the prestigious Cyprian Kamil Norwid Art Criticism Award. He publishes texts on art. In the 1980s, he painted figurative paintings maintained in the spirit of new expression, sometimes engaging in a postmodern dialogue with the motifs of ancient art. Even then he was fascinated by mysterious gardens, lush vegetation and the atmosphere of hot nights. Paintings maintained in such poetics he exhibited, among others, at the exhibition "Expression of the 80's", Sopot 1986. At the end of the decade he began to paint a series of landscapes inspired by the exotic wildlife he encountered in Madeira. The composition was filled with crowded, elongated, brownish-green trunks, in a narrow part glowing with yellow and red. These compositions were imbued with an expression of the primordial power of nature and archaism. A separate strand in his work is abstract painting, in which he uses the circle motif in particular, attaching symbolic meanings to it. The painting Untitled (26) from 1989 was shown in numerous exhibitions, including at the Starmach Gallery in 1990 and 1992.