Jacek Sienicki. Painting and works on paper

December 12, 2008 - January 30, 2009

The exhibition presented here is the first posthumous showing of Jacek Sienicki's painting to take place in Warsaw. It represents a selection of the artist's key works from those series of works that may be considered the most characteristic of his style. Sienicki consistently painted several particular motifs, selected from his nearest surroundings, such as the interior of his studio, portraits, the walls of houses and numerous still life studies – scraps of meat, withered flowers and the skulls and jaw bones of various animals. Observation of nature through the prism of past experience led the artist to his own characteristic painting solutions. In his predominantly subdued palette of colours, it is only here and there that we glimpse flashes of livelier colour in the represented matter. His impasto application of the paint is often juxtaposed with areas where paint layers have been scrubbed back down to the very canvas. Drawing too was an important and ever present element of Sienicki's works. This exhibition also includes selected works on paper from such series as: Holocaust, Ruins and Shot Dead. In the above mentioned, formally diverse series, the artist borrowed from history, not only as a witness of a city's destruction during the Warsaw Uprising (Ruins), but also on the basis of photographic evidence (Holocaust) and more current political events, as in the case of the miners killed during the strike in the Wujek coal mine in 1981 (Shot Dead). All the works presented come from Wanda Sienicka's private collection. The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive illustrated catalogue that includes a critique by Małgorzata Kitowska-Łysiak.

 

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