Andrzej SZEWCZYK (1950-2001), Untitled

emulsion, paint roller, cardboard; 70 x 50.5 cm;
on the back number: 224;
On the back of the binding, a printed paper sticker with the stamp of the Muzalewska Gallery and a sticker of the Art Agenda Nova gallery.
Exhibited:
- The Wonderfulness of Repeating Anything, Art Agenda Nova, Kraków 2021/2022,
- The Artist is an Argument, BWA Bielsko-Biala, 2022.
Andrzej Szewczyk - one of the most interesting personalities of post-war Polish art. Painter, sculptor, author of commentaries on his works. Initially engaged in painting and sculpture. In the late 1960s he created the first spatial arrangements and participated in art actions. In his painting, he denied the traditional role of the painterly image and the role of the painter as creator. He was interested in impersonal, mechanical painting, but at the same time joyful and vital. He used unusual sub-images and painting materials (walls, mirrors, school notebooks, maps). He imitated folk ways of decorating his surroundings. Since the late 1970s, issues of writing: writing, books, calligraphy became foreground in Szewczyk's art. Since 1981, he created compositions from crayon cuttings, wooden blocks glued to boards and canvases, poured over wax, paint and lead. The most famous in Szewczyk's work are the realizations from the Library series (from 1986). They consist of wooden boards-books, covered with lead writing. The artist is associated with Warsaw's Foksal Gallery and Starmach Gallery in Cracow. Works in the collections of the Art Museum in Lodz, the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw, the Upper Silesian Museum in Bytom.
Recalling W. Blake, who divided artists into good and bad, Andrzej Szewczyk used to say, "The first are those who copy. The second are those who pretend to copy. How close it is to me, this simple negation of the usurpation of creativity. There is no creativity at all, there is always a second hand."