Jerzy Truszkowski, WITHOUT TITLE, 1989

81.5 x 65.5cm - oil, humus, stencil, canvas signed p.d.: Truszkowski 89


The painting represents this stage of the artist's work, when he gradually transformed from an actioner and performer into an installation artist and painter. The building blocks of his installations from this period were monumental paintings, painted especially for this purpose, assembled into spatial constructions (like the work presented during the exhibition Dungeons of Manhattan in Lodz in 1989); the paintings, by the way, also accompanied his performances and concerts earlier. Such was their role that they were arranged in cycles with common features. Thus, Truszkowski's paintings from the late 1980s and early 1990s are characterized by a specific narrative of signs and symbols. He used various combinations of signs generally legible and known in our cultural circle, such as crosses of all shapes (Latin, Greek, Orthodox, Celtic, St. Andrew's...), swastikas, five-, six- and multi-pointed stars. During the period in question, he joined them with tamgs - ancestral and proprietary signs of Central Asian peoples, predecessors of coats of arms, including those of the Polish nobility of Tatar origin. Filling the fields of his paintings with signs, he took care of their formal elaboration, so that his paintings are in fact objects of varied and interesting texture.

All these features are represented by the offered painting. The background, painted with stencil and humus, with an out-of-focus effect, is contrasted with the "concreteness" of the convex drawing of crosses and stars, obtained by squeezing paint directly from the tube. This gives the composition a strong illusion of spatiality. The signature with a hammer as the first letter of the surname is a memento of performances from the early decade of the 1980s, when the artist often used this prop.



♣ 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 Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)

Jerzy Truszkowski played in the punk band "Bitch" as a teenager (1978-1980). Initially he studied philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin (1980-1981), then at the Institute of Artistic Education at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin (1980-1986). During his time as a student, he was associated with the circle of "Zrzuta Culture," a group active in the "Attic" in Lodz, and participated in the publication of the independent magazine "Tango" (1983-1986). In the early period he was strongly influenced by Andrzej Partum and his theory of positive nihilism, as well as the personality of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, whom he studied at university. Between 1983 and 1989, the mainstream of his work was expressive performances, initially accompanied by a group referred to, like their joint performances, as the "Nihilistic Orgiastic Alliance" or
"NAO" for short. Truszkowski's performance appearances were often accompanied by painted "view boards" (cycles "Nihilism of the Intellect," 1980-1985, "The Dictionary is the Basis of Communication," 1984-1986, "Somnambulic Symbolic System," 1985 and others). Since 1985, the artist, then usually performing solo, performed self-mutilation during his performances, cutting out symbols of stars, crosses, etc. with a scalpel on his hands, face and torso. ("ppp-fff", "Hysteria of Philosophy", Warsaw 1985, "Grand Master", Lublin 1986). In 1986-1989 he was active with the music and art group "Sternenhoch", which included Zbigniew Libera. In the late 1980s, he presented several performances with Jacek Rydecki. Since the late 1980s, painting began to dominate his work. In his paintings he presented various configurations of signs and symbols, usually combining them with the ideo-gram of the human silhouette (cycles "Human Crosses, Human Stars", 1987-1989, "Immortal Banner", 1990, "Step, Snow, Blood", 1991). He also drew inspiration from the world of oriental symbolism. In the mid-1990s, he turned to media art (photography, video), using mainly documentation of his own work from the 1980s. Since 1990, he has written a lot and published in catalogs and magazines. In 1992-1993 he co-edited Ryszard Ziarkiewicz's "Art Magazine". He is the author of pioneering studies: Critical Art in Poland. Part 1: Kwiek. Kulik. KwieKulik. 1967-1998, Poznań 1999 and Andrzej Partum 1938-2002, Warsaw 2002 and a book documenting his own work: Hysteria of Philosophy, Poznań 2000.