Jolanta Ajlikow-Czarnecka (1930–2007) taught young people the history of art, drawing, visual arts and, above all, how to look at art, experience it in an unconventional way and seek their own artistic path at Bolesławiec primary and secondary schools. Many of her students became artists, like her; many studied art history. Others, the most numerous group, still cherish their contact with the professor’s extraordinary personality and repeat how much they owe her.
President Piotr Roman recalled her at the opening. He had benefited from the professor’s professional experience while working alongside her at I Liceum Ogólnokształcące. Deputy starosta Tomasz Gabrysiak, who had been her student, also spoke about her; under her guidance, he experienced performance art for the first time (a personal, individual artistic statement). The artist and teacher was one of Bolesławiec’s most outstanding residents. Her contribution to building and educating our community was invaluable.
A major event, and a great achievement by the organizer, the Studio in Memory of Jolanta Ajlikow-Czarnecka, was the collection of several dozen of the painter’s works and their presentation, for the first time, to the artist’s residents, friends and students.
Jolanta Ajlikow-Czarnecka was a 20th-century painter. The roots of her painting reach back to artistic movements that emerged after 1918, such as Cubism, Fauvism and abstractionism. Her paintings show the great emphasis she placed on form, color and chiaroscuro. Purely visual values were what mattered in her paintings. The large, flat color silhouettes on her canvases bring Matisse’s art to mind. Like him, she believed that a painter’s knowledge of color was a matter of instinct and taste, not learning. For Ajlikow-Czarnecka, the artist was the sole authority on their own works, which also brought her close to the modernist ideas of Oscar Wilde and Stanisław Przybyszewski. She was a pioneer of performance art in Bolesławiec and of conceptual art based on showing the act of creation itself.
Knowledge competitions about art named after Jolanta Ajlikow-Czarnecka are still held in Bolesławiec and organized by the Museum of Ceramics.
During the opening, our film about the artist, “To Be Someone Else Would Be an Art,” was screened. It was produced by istotne.pl in 2007, shortly before her death. In the film, the artist spoke about her childhood in Kraków and life in a home before World War II, surrounded by artists and intellectuals. The painter also spoke about the high demands she placed on herself when creating. She described arriving in Bolesławiec with her husband after the war and how difficult it was for the artist to adapt to a small town. She concluded her statement with one important sentence: “Everyone experiences art according to what they are capable of.”
The exhibition can be viewed during the Archive’s opening hours until November 10, 2017: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (break from 12:00 to 12:20 p.m.), and Wednesday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (breaks: 12:00–12:20 p.m. and 3:00–3:20 p.m.)
