Jerzy Duda Gracz, NARRED, 1964

74.0 x 55.0 cm - oil, plate signed p.d.: Jerzy Duda-Gracz
Signed on the reverse g.: "NARZECHONA". oil.pł. 55 x 74 cm | Jerzy Duda-Gracz 1964.

Below the exhibition sticker of the Ethnographic Museum in Cracow [print]: Jerzy Duda-Gracz exhibition | "JUDAIKI" | EL MALEI RACHAMIM [in Hebrew] | Ethnographic Museum in Cracow | 23.06.-26.08.2007 | Jewish Culture Festival in Cracow, on the right the stamp of Conspero Foundation.

Image exhibited:

- Ethnographic Museum in Cracow, Jerzy Duda Player's "Judaica" exhibition, 23 June - 26 August 2007 [as part of the 17th Jewish Culture Festival in Cracow];

- Prelude. Wrocław Collection, Gallery of the Agra-Art Auction House, Warsaw 28 I - 3 III 2023;

- Polish Summer. Duda Gracz at Tichauer, Tichauer Art Gallery, Tychy 1 VII - 24 IX 2023.

Reproduced image:

- Jerzy Duda Gracz. Judaica. Judaica, Conspero Foundation, Cracow 2007, p. 10, color ill., cat. no. 7;
- Prelude. Wroclaw collection (exhibition catalog), Agra-Art, Warsaw I 2023, p. 11, color ill., cat. no. 1;
- Polish Summer. Duda Gracz at Tichauer, Tichauer Art Gallery, Tychy VI 2023, p. 13, color ill.



The painting The Bride was created in the early period of the artist's work, fascinated by Jewish themes at the time. In the 1960s, as a young art student, he maintained close contact with the local Jewish community, learning about its rituals and customs. In 1961, while still a student of an art high school, he led exercises in painting and drawing at the Częstochowa club that brought together its members. In 1962-1968 - the time of his studies at the Department of Graphic Arts at the Katowice branch of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow - he continued training Jewish youth in Katowice. His interest in the culture and history of the Mosaic minority resulted in a series of linocuts Judaica (1965-1968) and Ghetto (1966-1969) and a series of oil paintings, also titled Ghetto (1964-1966). Their exhibition, which was the first in the artist's oeuvre, was shown at the headquarters of the Jewish Social and Cultural Society in Gliwice, Katowice and Warsaw. It is likely that the work from the Wroclaw collection presented at the auction was also included. Presenting a sad, red-haired beauty, it is a portrait expanded with symbols typical of the culture of Judaism. The mystery of the woman's identity was revealed by the artist in one of his extensive statements about a Philo-Semitic episode in his work:

I fell in love with a girl whose name was Lucyna Sara. We knew that we could never be together. Her parents were faithful to the letter of the Old Testament, and mine to the letter of the New. It all collapsed in '68. I remember those endless escorts to airports and train stations, that goodbye and promises to meet in another, better Poland. And although I didn't save anyone's life during the war, my students in Israel planted seven trees "in memory" of me. I even received a corresponding document confirming this fact. I tried to paint this loving unfulfillment, I tried to paint pictures of intolerance, I wanted to present the idea of the Eternal Wanderer Jew translated into the language of 1960s Poland (quoted in Jerzy Duda Gracz. Citizen of the Polish province, interviewed by E. Mazgal, "Gazeta Olsztyńska," No. 79, 1995)

Duda Gracz gave many friends leaving the country the paintings he had created in memory of themselves and the difficult history they had faced. After many years, fourteen of them were purchased in Seattle for the Wroclaw collection, including the one given to his fiancée.



♣ to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, will be added a fee resulting from the right of the creator and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)

Jerzy Duda Gracz (Częstochowa 1941 - Łagów 2004)- painter, illustrator, stage designer, educator. He received his diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow at the Department of Graphics in Katowice in 1968. In 1976-82 he was a lecturer at the academy, then a professor at the Silesian University in Katowice. He also taught at the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw (1992-2001).
His paintings are characterized by technical virtuosity and attention to detail. He practiced art in the broadly defined realist convention with dominant figure deformation and grotesque. He created a world of unmasking, using the language of journalism and allegory. He is the author of several major projects, including the "Transfiguration" plafond in the church in Toporovo (1995) and the "Golgotha of Jasna Gora" series in the Monastery of the Pauline Fathers in Czestochowa (2000/2001). The artist has had more than 180 solo exhibitions at home and abroad (including Berlin, London, Paris, Moscow, Rome, Vienna, Florence, Düsseldorf, Chicago, New Delhi, Munich, New York and others). He participated in about 300 national exhibitions and international presentations of Polish art. He represented Poland, among others, at the XLI Art Biennale in Venice in 1984, at the XX and XXI World Art Fairs in Cologne in 1986 and 1987, and at EXPO '92 in Seville. Jerzy Duda Player's paintings are in the collections of the National Museums in Warsaw, Cracow, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk, the Jagiellonian University Museum in Collegium Maius in Cracow, the Museum of the Earth of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the art collections at Jasna Gora in Czestochowa and other district and city museums, and in private collections, including those of W. Ochman and W. Fibak; abroad - in the collections of the Uffizi in Florence, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Ghent City Museum, the "BAWAG" Foundation in Vienna and the Vatican Collection, as well as in the galleries and collections of Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Israel, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA, Venezuela, the UK, Italy and Hungary.