marker, pencil / paper
29.5 x 21 cm
signed, dated and described at the bottom of the composition: WLODZMIERZ PAWLAK DRAWING 2021
Włodzimierz Pawlak (b. 1957) - painter, performer, as well as art theoretician and academic teacher. From 1980 to 1985 he studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. With five other artists he met there (Sobczyk, Grzyb, Modzelewski, Kowalewski and Wozniak), he formed the Gruppa formation in 1983, practicing politically engaged, expressive art under the sign of the so-called New Wild. Pawlak, however, always stood, so to speak, on the sidelines of Gruppa's activities, and by the late 1980s he had already followed his own separate creative path. A dialogue with the "classics" of the constructivist avant-garde, in particular Kazimir Malevich and Wladyslaw Strzeminski, always remained an important issue for his art. In cycles including Didactic Tables, Diaries and Notes on Art , he taught his own view of the history of art and a plastic interpretation of its most important theoretical currents. His work tended toward the geometrization of shapes and the use of pure colors, and often only one covering the entire canvas. Pawlak devoted himself to reflecting on the form, color and texture of a painting in a way that was original for Polish art, combining artistic practice with the activity of an art theorist. Thanks to these values, among others, he was honored with the Jan Cybis Lifetime Achievement Award (2017).
