Jan Dobkowski, SPRINGING LOOK, 1996-97

147,5 x 98,0 cm - acrylic, canvas signature p.d.: Jan Dobkowski 1996-97

Sign. on back: Jan Dobkowski | "SPRING EYE" | 1996-97 | acrylic | 148 x 99 cm

In my paintings I try to mix plant, animal and human elements, to show the richness of the lines of these worlds, which form one whole. I want to show the boiling life.

- Jan Dobkowski in conversation with Elżbieta Dzikowska, Poles in the Art of the World, Rosikon Press, Warsaw 2001, p. 40.



Perhaps the greatest gourmet of the body and expressor of its sensuality in contemporary Polish art is almost always in the studio: creating - this is not only his passion, but also his greatest joy and pleasure. The vivacity, the unheard-of vitality of his paintings and drawings, everything he creates, is not contrived, programmed, but comes from within, from his Jan Dobkowski-world, which is so intimate, full of extraordinary expression at the same time. Delicacy and madness. Explosion and maximum tranquility. Discipline and instinct. Light, but also darkness when he wants it. But above all - as his admirers know - it is a world of lines. Line traces thinking, says the artist. (...). He can express everything with a line, and it is the line that most defines his art, making it instantly recognizable and unique.

Jan Dobkowski. Orgies and ritual dances. Orgies and ritual dances, introduction by Elżbieta Dzikowska, published by Adi-Art, Lodz 2001.



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

Jan Dobkowski (Łomża 1942, lives in Warsaw) studied from 1962-1968 at the Faculty of Painting of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts under Prof. Juliusz Studnicki and Jan Cybis. While still a student, in 1966, he formed an artistic duo, with Jerzy (Jurry) Zieliński as his partner. Their first joint exhibition, entitled Neo-Neo-Neo, took place in Warsaw in 1967, and they exhibited together until 1970. 1968 saw Dobkowski's first green and red paintings (using the pseudonym Dobson at the time). In these works, operating with supple, wavy lines, in which the influence of Art Nouveau was seen, the artist used methods straight out of op-art to produce optical illusions (swirling, blurring, apparent movement of forms). In parallel with his paintings, he also created plate and foil forms for mounting in space. A gold medal at the Golden Grape Symposium in Zielona Gora in 1971 and a nearly year-long stay in the US on a Kosciuszko Foundation scholarship in 1972 were the next stages of the painter's successful career. A marked change in the mood and meaning of his works was brought about by the events of 1980-1981, especially the introduction of martial law. At that time he marked monochromatic, dark canvases with faint, flaccid lines of drawing. The most common motifs were patriotic and religious symbols, spiced up with titles alluding to the realities of the time. Another radical change occurred around 1990. The symbolic harbinger of the new period became a huge, joyful painting exploding with a wealth of colors, shapes and movement ...and life is flowing.... (394 x 588 cm) from 1990-1991. Similar formal features characterize the artist's work throughout the decade of the 1990s. In parallel with painting, Dobkowski works on drawing, which is a very important complement to his work.