Dimensions: 110 x 140 cm
signed lower right: '[artist's signature]'
Condition
Unframed work
Biography
Marek Kamieński (b. 1953) Painter, draftsman, filmmaker, creator of installations and performances, one of the leading representatives of the “new expression” movement in painting of the 1980s, vocalist and producer of the band Zilch (Jarocin 1984–1985), was born in Katowice. From 1972 to 1979, he studied at the Katowice branch of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in the Department of Graphic Arts, after which he became part of the 1980s art movement with his large-format paintings—laced with irony and heavily laced with eroticism—combined with photography. The artist’s first solo exhibition took place in 1983 at the BWA in Katowice. Using photographs from illustrated and pornographic magazines, he combined Pop Art stylistics with paint applied to the canvas in an almost “wild” manner (Motorhead, 1982). He also did not shy away from playful, fantastical visions, such as the highly expressive, monstrously enlarged stuffed toys, references to paintings by Jan Matejko, or fantastical creatures (Dinosaurs, 1985). Since then, he has freely gathered and combined motifs, blending elements of high and popular culture with icons of European art. In the late 1980s, he moved away from “wild” painting in favor of a postmodern play with various conventions. He draws on Futurist stylistics (Dancing Socrates, Breakfast on the Grass, 1991), and in subsequent years on the classics of painting, travestying and quoting, mixing and paraphrasing various well-known painterly themes. He continues to this day with this narrative, multifaceted, and multi-layered approach to creating motifs on canvas. His current works (Vincent and Paul Go for a Motif, 2009), meticulously refined, even decorative, exude a riot of vivid colors, a flatly constructed pictorial space, a dense narrative, and unconventional clusters of ideas that do not shy away from pastiche.
The Great Encyclopedia of Polish Painting, Foreword by Jan K. Ostrowski, Kluszczyński Publishing House, Kraków 2011
