Czesław Dźwigaj came to Bolesławiec with the exhibition of paintings “Hommage to Requiem” (Tribute to the Requiem). His works can be admired in Kraków (Wawel Cathedral), Jerusalem, Fatima, Lourdes, Rome and Chicago. At the opening, we met a man who spoke interestingly and passionately about his work and expressed his gratitude for being welcomed to the city of ceramics.
The exhibition was set up at the centre over three days by the artist’s own team together with BOK-MCC employees. During a break, Czesław Dźwigaj went for a walk. He admired not only the beautiful old town; he was also charmed by the fact that the people he met warmly returned his greetings.
“As a person, I thank you for this kindness. Kindness costs nothing, yet sometimes it is so difficult to receive,” the artist said. “I visit many cities and can recognise which ones love art. It is the elites who love artists. The atmosphere at BOK-MCC is also extraordinary. While the exhibition was being installed, I observed how much happens here. Everyone comes here, from children to mature adults, and everyone creates here. They paint, sculpt, create in the glass and stained-glass workshop, and dance. What happened to me here is extraordinary. I thank director Ewa Lijewska-Małachowska, all the centre’s employees and Katarzyna Zarówna for her invaluable help,” the exhibition’s author added at the opening.
With great fondness, Czesław Dźwigaj spoke about Roman Maciejewski, a great composer who is almost unknown in Poland but highly respected and admired around the world, and about his exceptional musical work “Missa pro defunctis. Requiem”. The work, first performed at the fourth edition of the Warsaw Autumn festival in 1960, was criticised by the politicised censors of the time. Maciejewski’s works gained increasing recognition around the world, while in Poland they were practically ridiculed or, as Professor Dźwigaj put it, “run over”.
The artist worked for four years on the exhibition paying tribute to Maciejewski’s Requiem. He encountered Roman Maciejewski’s work at the beginning of this century, when the composer’s brother asked him to create a monument dedicated to the Requiem. The commission was never realised, but it provided inspiration and began a process of exploration that led to the culmination represented by this exceptional exhibition—a tribute and monument to Maciejewski’s greatest work, while also being an individual vision of the great eschatological drama.
Czesław Dźwigaj has created nearly 70 monuments to John Paul II in Poland and abroad. The artist’s body of work also includes dozens of other monuments: Grudzień ‘70 in Szczecin; Synom tej Ziemi in Świątniki Górne; monuments to Gen. Leopold Okulicki and Stanisław Fischer in Bochnia; Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski in Stalowa Wola; Father Piotr Skarga; To the Victims of Genocide in the Eastern Borderlands; Marshal Józef Piłsudski; I.J. Paderewski in Kraków; Nikifor in Krynica-Zdrój; King Sigismund Augustus in Augustów; King Łokietek in Tarnów; King Casimir III the Great in Skawina; Duke Władysław V the Chaste in Nowe Brzesko; Henryk Sienkiewicz in the Villa Borghese Park in Rome and in Szczawnica; Jan Matejko; Juliusz Kossak; Stanisław Lubomirski; Rainbow of the Covenant in Nowy Wiśnicz; the Park and Monument of Tolerance in Jerusalem; and the Katyń–Smoleńsk monument in Warsaw.