DWURNIK'S HISTORY OF POLAND

Dwurnik is one of Poland's most celebrated and important painters - and one of its most controversial. His work is recognized throughout Poland and elsewhere for Dwurnik's sketchy, narrative style and for his uncommon ability to capture the essence of "Polishness" - in all its forms. A keen observer, Dwurnik has created 25 (and counting) separate series of enumerated paintings that  together form a comprehensive portrait of Poland's culture, its architecture, its people, and its turbulent history. His works hang in the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, in the Polish National Museum, and in a variety of other European museums.

Dwurnik graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1970. One of his earliest series of paintings, "Hitch-hiking Trips" (a series that he began in 1966 and that he continues to this day), depicts the cities and villages that dot Poland's vast landscape. These portraits, typically painted from an improbable bird's-eye perspective, are noteworthy both for the detail that he gives them and for his frequent altering of the place's "true" physical characteristics. By taking certain liberties with a town's architecture, layout, color and history, Dwurnik creates a better sense of the place's genuine character than would be possible by a snap-shot-rendering of the physical moment. His paintings show a place from the perspective of different times and events. A portrait of New York painted in 2002 shows the Twin Towers. For Dwurnik, it would seem, New York is simply not "New York" without them. In Dwurnik's memory, in New York's history, in the hearts of a nation, the buildings remain. They are somewhat ghostly in his painting, as if to acknowledge the awful truth; they are there, but they are apparitions. Historically, and culturally, they define the place. Yet, they exist outside the here and now.

This painting is characteristic of Dwurnik's style in other respects. What we typically regard as the "detail" is sketchy - painted quickly and showing only the most relevant features. Dwurnik's style has been compared to that of a newspaper reporter. He paints as if he were under the painterly equivalent of a strict word limit. He does not waste time making sure the bricks are all in the right place or that a person's outfit has the exact right number of buttons. For him, the "true" detail lies elsewhere - in the tenor of the moment; in the context, whether cultural, historical, political, physical or emotional.

Dwurnik's paintings are typically chaotic. They reflect the bustle and energy of a living, breathing place. These are not picture post-cards (after all, even "real" photographs are palpably artificial - they show only a limited part of the landscape, and they tell nothing of what happened just before or just after the picture was taken). Birds, dogs and circus animals fill Dwurnik's town squares, often more prominently than people do. The animals often wear hats or smoke pipes. Perhaps they are caricatures. Perhaps the artist is making an ironic statement about civility or sophistication. Perhaps he is just having fun.

Included within the "Hitch-hiking Trips" series are Dwurnik's "Diagonal Cities" paintings, one of which ("Białogard") is included in the exhibition. These works depict cities from the idealized perspective of the city planner; everything is neat and tidy and laid out in perfectly straight lines. The colors are pretty. Everything matches. These paintings are allegories: his model cities suggest idealized notions of the model society promised by the Polish People's Republic or by the country's new democratic governments. We are captivated by their prettiness. Their order. We almost fail to notice that there are no people in them.

Other series include the "Sportsmen" series, which shows Poles engaged in the "sport" of living life day-to-day. Here we find love, drinking,  men & women at work (or pretending to be). We see commonness. We see acts of violence; indifference; totalitarianism. These are paintings and drawings from the hard years. A man is king because he has a loaf of bread. Workers on parade look heroic but are entrapped behind towering walls that look like they were put up quickly and shabbily (as often they were). Dwurnik does not paint pretty portraits. He strives to observe and to reflect back to us what he sees as the true nature of what he paints.

His "Way to the East" series tells of places to which Poles were exiled during the Second World War. "From December to June," a series of 96 paintings honoring individual victims of the martial law years in Poland, was panned by the establishment critics, but widely applauded by the people, particularly those in the cities where the atrocities occurred. His "Twenty Third Series" includes paintings that celebrate music and the contributions of Jewish culture to Poland. Two of these paintings will be included in the exhibition at the Nevin Kelly Gallery.

Dwurnik has received several prestigious awards for his art. He received the C.K. Norwid Art Critics Prize in 1981. In 1983, he received a Solidarity Cultural Award, sparking criticism from fellow artists who argued that the award should be withdrawn because of claims that Dwurnik violated an artists' boycott during the martial law years by exhibiting in State-owned galleries. The award was not withdrawn. 

He received the first Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation prize for painting in 1992 (the foundation was formed by the Swiss-based Coutts & Co. International Private Banking in celebration of its 300^th anniversary).

Dwurnik has been widely exhibited in his native Poland and in London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Sydney, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and many other cities. He was the subject of a large 2001 "attempt at a retrospective" (the actual title) at the prestigious Zachęta Gallery of Contemporary Art in Warsaw. A documentary called "Edward Dwurnik's Travels" (directed by Grazyna Banaszkiewicz) was released in 1985.

A review of Dwurnik's first major retrospective (at The Wurttembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart, Germany in 1994) by German art critic Martin Hentschel notes the relevance of Dwurnik's paintings outside the Polish context:

"Dwurnik unites the narrative elements of his paintings with description of an allegoric and visionary nature. Despite the general focus on his own country, these works are still of interest to the Western viewer. For what we have here is not simply specifically Polish history . . . but also, a history of the near-inexhaustible potential for different behavioural responses to politically repressive conditions." (Seitensprung 7/1994).

The solo exhibition at the Nevin Kelly Gallery will include more than 25 paintings, drawings and watercolors spanning the period from the mid-1970s to the present.