On Friday, 6 March, at 6:00 p.m., the opening of a highly interesting exhibition of paintings by Jerzy Duda-Gracz, entitled “Remnants,” will take place at the Museum of Ceramics at 14 Kutuzowa Street. It will include his most famous works, such as “The Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or the Fucha” and “Field Hamlet.”
Jerzy Duda-Gracz was one of the most recognizable and talented Polish artists of the 20th century. He created his works using such means of artistic expression as caricature, hyperbole and deformation, especially in relation to the human body, which bears the marks of ugliness in his paintings.
Through this construction of the depicted world and by using simple symbols that were nevertheless understandable only in their native context, he exposed the flaws of Polish society, such as stupidity, laziness, the blind pursuit of money, passivity and immaturity. Jerzy Duda-Gracz revealed the flaws of the socio-political reality of the Polish People’s Republic, in which he lived and worked. He exposed the system’s imperfections and criticized the socialist work ethic.
The artist was also known as an insightful portraitist and observer who, with clockmaker’s precision, presented the features of human appearance and character and showed no mercy even to himself. Especially during his final period, Duda-Gracz was also a melancholic landscape painter, the author of atmospheric views of towns and villages in the Kraków-Częstochowa Jura, imbued with simple, traditional religiosity—views that move even opponents of the artist’s rhetoric.
The exhibition at the Museum of Ceramics in Bolesławiec can be visited until 30 April 2015. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by the Karkonosze Museum in Jelenia Góra.
Jerzy Duda Gracz was born on 20 March 1941 in Częstochowa and died on 5 November 2014 in Łagów. A Polish painter, draughtsman and university lecturer. He graduated from the State Secondary School of Fine Arts Techniques in Częstochowa. In 1968, he obtained a diploma from the Faculty of Graphic Arts of the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts branch in Katowice. From 1976 to 1982, he was an associate professor and lecturer in painting and graphic arts at that institution. From 1992 to 2001, he lectured at the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw. Until his death in 2004, he was a professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice. He was the author of around 3,000 paintings, held, among other places, in the collections of the National Museums in Kraków, Warsaw, Gdańsk and Poznań; the Museum of Art in Łódź; the Uffizi Museum in Florence; the Vatican Museums; the A. Pushkin Museum in Moscow; the City Museum in Ghent; the Bawag Museum in Vienna; and private collections. He received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Silver Cross of Merit (1977), the Badge of Merit for Cultural Activity (1980), the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1986), the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1996), the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2000), and the St. Brother Albert Award (2001).