STANISLAW
FIJALKOWSKI
Born 1922, Volhynia
Solo and Group Exhibitions
Several hundred in Poland and internationally.
Collections
Tate Gallery, London
Museum of Modern Art, New York
McGrew Hill Collection, New York
Museum Bochum, Germany
Museo della Xilografia 'Ugo da Carpi', Italy
Kupfersticch-Kabinett, Dresden, Germany
Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany
Kunsthalle Hannover, Germany
St Annen-Museum, Lubeck, Germany
Museo Civico di Belle Arti, Lugano, Switzerland
National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic
Tretjakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
Centre de la Gravure et de l'Image Imprimee, La Louviere, Belgium
National Museum in Gdansk, Poland
National Museum in Krakow, Poland
National Museum in Poznan, Poland
National Museum in Szczecin, Poland
National Museum in Warsaw, Polan
Art Musum in Bydgoszcz, Poland
Art Musum in Chelm, Poland
Art Musum in Kaszalin, Poland
Art Musum in Lodz, Poland
Art Musum in Radom, Poland
Art Musum in Torun, Poland
Art Musum in Zielona Gora, Poland
Galerie Vytvarnego Umeni, Roundnice nad Laden, Czech Republic
Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna
Gewerbemuseum, Winterthur, Swizerland
Print Collection of the Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, Croatia
STANISLAW
FIJALKOWSKI
Born in Zdolbunowo in Wolhynia in 1922. In 1944-45
Fijalkowski was deported to Königsberg (presently Kaliningrad),
where he was pressed into forced labor. It was during Poland's occupation,
a particularly difficult time in Fijalkowski's life, that he undertook
his first creative explorations as an artist. These efforts were
entirely independent, unguided by anyone. He did not find time for
systematic study in painting until after the war. Between 1946 and
1951 he attended the State Higher School of the Fine Arts in Lodz,
where he was a student of Wladyslaw Strzeminski and Stefan Wegner,
though he had Ludwik Tyrowicz as his thesis promoter. From among
his teachers, Fijalkowski most readily names Strzeminski as an influence,
perhaps because he later worked under him as an assistant (the artist
taught at his alma mater from 1947-1993, becoming a full professor
in 1983). He was an important presence within the group of educators
who shaped the school in Lodz (known today as the Academy of Fine
Arts). He also guest lectured for brief periods at a series of foreign
art schools, among them the schools in Mons (1978, 1982) and Marburg
(1990). He taught classes at Geissen University throughout the 1989/90
academic year.
Fijalkowski began his career as an independent artist by rebelling
against his master, creating works that possess a clear link to
those of the Impressionists. He made an effort to delineate his
own, individual creative path by taking a clear position towards
tradition and the achievements of the masters, particularly Strzeminski.
Towards the end of the 1950s he proceeded along a course typical
of Polish painters fascinated with Informel, taking an interest
in the symbolic meanings inherent in abstract expressive means.
He believed that "unreal" shapes are justified in paintings
when they are saturated with meaning. Years later, in writing a
brief curriculum vitae, the artist added that it was approximately
at this time that "...apart from interpreting reality within
an esoteric dimension, there appeared [in his paintings] the need
to organize the esoteric meanings inherent in form." Fijalkowski
admits that the shape of his art was to a significant degree determined
by the writings of Kandinsky (whose "Über das Geistige
in der Kunst" Fijalkowski translated and published in Poland)
and Mondrian, and by his interest in Surrealism. These two branches
of 20th century art unexpectedly combined in Fijalkowski's art to
produce surprising results. At the turn of the 1950s and 60s Fijalkowski
continued to search and experiment, using the canvas as a plane
on which to juxtapose the essentials of Strzeminski's ordering principles
with something within the realm of Surrealism that was stripped
of direct metaphorical meanings and allusions.
The change that occurred in his paintings consisted primarily of
a gradual abandonment of pure, literally allusive form. In the painter's
own words, during this time of reflection, "I attempted more
boldly to create forms that did not impose a single meaning, leaving
viewers fully free to access the ingredients of their personalities,
that may be unconscious or repressed but are absolutely truthful.
I sought, and continue to strive, to create form that is only the
beginning of the work as generated by the viewer, each time in a
new shape..." In Fijalkowski's works, "form" is more
open the more it is modest, efficient, insinuated. Most of his compositions
are constructed based on a simple set of principles whereby an almost
uniformly colored background is filled in with elements that resemble
geometric figures but have rounded corners and soft edges, generating
a poetic mood. The decisive hues used for the backgrounds of these
canvasses, however, decidedly modifies their function and meaning
- at times, the background dominates the entirety of the image,
becoming an abyss, a void that draws into its interior large, spinning
wheels, ellipsoidal forms, or diagonal lines that cut across the
painting. One could expect this repetition of forms to render both
Fijalkowski's painted works and his graphic art pieces tiring (the
artist has been equally active in both areas, working in cycles,
though the subjects undertaken often appeared in compositions created
in various techniques). This impression is only reinforced by the
artist's palette, which was restricted; he willingly used "undecided
colors" that were muted, cool, and only at times broken up
with ribbons of categorical black. But Fijalkowski was able to extract
a tension out of this monotony and uniformity, in a manner that
usually remains unfathomable to the viewer. Likewise, the meanings
the artist assigns to these puzzling arrangements remain largely
a mystery. In the end, it is the erudition of viewers, their rooting
in culture and awareness of contemporary art, finally their intuition
that determine their ability to enter into a dialogue with the artist
and his work. This dialogue is easier to establish in the case of
pieces that contain "objective" suggestions and clear
references, for instance to Christian iconography. It is more difficult
in the case of abstract compositions like WAWOZY / RAVINES, WARIACJE
NA TEMAT LICZBY CZTERY / VARIATIONS ON THE NUMBER FOUR, STUDIA TALMUDYCZNE
/ TALMUDIC STUDIES, or works like AUTOSTRADY / HIGHWAYS that derive
from the artist's personal experiences. Nevertheless, Fijalkowski's
paintings are charming, even to the uninitiated viewer, for the
ascetic painting techniques used, for a compactness deriving from
the skillful balancing of emotions and intellect, intuition and
conscious thought, individual expression and universal meanings
- something very much in line with the artist's own expectations.
The parallel existence and synthesis of the concrete forms of the
works with the mystery of their message - a synthesis of that which
is external to the works with that which is internal - prevents
his oeuvre from being perceived as over-aestheticized. In the end,
his work seems to be the result of a search for harmony, for a principle
that would impose order on the lack of direction felt by contemporary
man. The artist achieves this aim through a distinct painterly language
that sets his art apart from that of other artists, rendering it
exceptional and original, not only, it seems, when compared to the
work of other Polish artists.
Stanislaw Fijalkowski is chairman of the Polish section of the XYLON
International Association of Wood-Engravers and has been a vice
president of this body's International Board since 1990. Between
1974 and 1979 he was the vice president of the Polish AIAP Committee
(Association Internationale des Arts Plastiques). He is a member
of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences in Salzburg and the
Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences, Literature, and Fine Arts in
Brussels.
The artist represented Poland at the biennales in Sao Paulo (1969)
and Venice (1972). In 1977 he received the Cyprian Kamil Norwid
Art Criticism Prize and was awarded the prestigious Jan Cybis Prize
in 1990. He has also received numerous domestic and international
awards at a number of exhibitions, including the Graphic Art Biennale
in Krakow (1968 and 1970), the Bianco e Nero Exhibition in Lugano
(1972), and the Graphic Art Biennale in Lubliana (1977). In celebration
of the artist's 70th birthday, the National Museum in Poznan is
planning a retrospective of Fijalkowski's work for the year 2002.
Malgorzata Kitowska-Lysiak
Art History Institute of the Catholic University of Lublin
Faculty of Art Theory and the History of Artistic Doctrines
December 2001 |
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