Bozenna Biskupska, Cage I, 1995

oil, paper, 100 x 70 cm signed, dated and inscribed at the bottom: Bożenna Biskupska, Klatka'I 1995

provenance: private collection, Warsaw

Bożenna Biskupska was born in Warsaw in 1952. She studied at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznań in 1970-72 and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1972-76. She received her diploma with honors in the studio of Prof. Tadeusz Dominik in 1976. She practices painting and sculpture. At the Fourth International Biennial of Weaving Miniatures, Savaria Museum, Szhombathely, Hungary in 1982, she won first prize. In 1984 she received a two-year scholarship from the Minister of Culture and Art, in 1986 she received the Stanislaw Wyspianski First Degree Award - for painting and sculpture. She represented Poland at the XLI Art Biennale in Venice in 1984 and at the 14th International Biennial of Small Sculptures in Bronze in Padua.

In the early stages of her independent work, the artist moved beyond the confines of the painting and weaving space towards three-dimensional forms. The breakthrough came in the 1980s, when Biskupska began constructing huge deformed human silhouettes (Mystery of Time, Non Omnis Moriar, Slabs). She prepared them from various materials, including tarps, fibers and sawdust. They were symbols of suffering, transience and death.

The figures were then transformed into their own signs: from expressive and ambiguous forms to an abstract concept. The artist searched for an appropriate form of expression (Sitting, Organism) to finally decide on the figure of One-Legged. It is the most expressive and dramatic of the artist's figural proposals. Particularly important for the conceptual development of Biskupska's work was an outdoor exhibition at the Center for Polish Sculpture in 1998, which featured seven One-legged objects from the series Outlining the Image. The figures were enclosed in cubes made of steel angles.