oil, canvas, 73 x 62 cm
From the beginning, Eugeniusz Markowski's style was associated with a trend that can be described, in a nutshell, as New Figuration, although it should be remembered that in Markowski's case it appeared much earlier than in the case of his Western colleagues. A far better term for the artist's work seems to be "New Figurative Art," emphasizing the archaic, caricatured, deliberately primitive way of painting and processing real (especially living) forms. Markovsky is a merciless commentator (or perhaps just an observer) of human nature, which is why the human figure is reduced by him to the shape of an animal hybrid, driven by aggression, greed, covetousness and jealousy. In this way, the artist wanted to express the contrast between man as a producer of highly developed civilization and man as a biological being, driven solely by drives. The figures in Markovsky's paintings, although far from the workshop of the Flemings, have something of Bruegel or Bosch: they are beast-stalkers, devouring with their satanic maw everything they encounter along the way. The artist's work is a mirror from Andersen's fairy tales, in which even God has a scurrilous face.
Signed p.d., inscribed on the back PUTTO - VE.3 73x62 1980
