Anna Bereźnicka-Kalkowska received her degree from the Gdańsk PWSSP in the painting studio of Prof. Kiejsut Bereźnicki. She lives and works in Gdynia, focusing on painting and ceramics.
Painting signed with two such distinguished names—Bereźnicka-Kalkowska—arouses spontaneous interest and forces the viewer into inevitable comparisons with the achievements of two famous gentlemen: the Author’s Father and Husband.
And these comparisons are accompanied above all by growing amazement, even surprise. Anna Bereźnicka-Kalkowska’s painting proves to be surprisingly independent and testifies to the individual, solitary path of exploration chosen by the artist, without looking either to current fashions or family traditions.She paints still lifes, carefully selecting the objects she studies, while surprising us with their combinations and composition, manner of seeing and colour scheme. These are certainly not merely “objects from an artist’s studio”; they are probably closer to the decorations with which the subconscious furnishes our souls.
Her focus on still life thus seems significant to me... On the one hand, it is perhaps the most natural way to return to painting after a longer break—which is the case here—although, in fairness, it should be added that the artist also took a particular liking to still life in the early phase of her career. She is therefore returning to what she likes most, and returning to the place from which she set out. On the other hand, however, I find something additional in Anna Bereźnicka-Kalkowska’s approach to still life, something beyond the choice of subject and technique.
Hunting trophies mixed with musical instruments, exquisite shells, beads and lace, alongside rather crude bottles and glass vessels. And suddenly... a teddy bear that has wandered here by chance. An arrangement of unusual objects foreign to one another, placed here into a consistent and harmonious whole, although the principle uniting them is aesthetic rather than logical, serving emotion rather than cognition.
This is often how a child looks at the world—a child who does not yet know the hierarchy, importance or even purpose of the objects surrounding them. The child marvels at the world, its shapes, forms and colours. The child discovers the world and names it, so their gaze is fresh, marked by wonder and longing. It is not clouded by experience, which constantly makes us compare what is new with what is already known, what is different and surprising with what is exemplary and conventional. And when a female painter looks at the world in this way, a fascinating landscape of some mysterious fragment of the world emerges—a landscape in which the beauty of objects, their colours, textures and inner radiance, combines with the radiance of a spiritual aura that exists—or does not exist—beyond the painterly technique and intellectual filtering.
Such are Anna Bereźnicka-Kalkowska’s paintings. They discover and name “anew” fragments of some world—of the soul, biography or childhood?—for themselves, while we surrender to the fascination of their unexpected beauty, like children gazing at a mysterious picture in the open pages of the Great Book of the World. And there are still so many illustrations left for her to paint!
Władysław Zawistowski “my still lifes” Anna Bereźnicka-Kalkowska
Solo and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad
1991 Poznań – Anny Kareńska Gallery and Stage
1991 Freiburg – Obfingen – Hansjőrg Hauck Gallery
1993 Ankum – Josef Lange Gallery
1995 Poznań – Anny Kareńska Gallery and Stage
2000 Sopot – Puenta Gallery
2000 Gdańsk – Oliwa – National Museum in Gdańsk, Department of Contemporary Art
2000 Będomin – National Museum in Gdańsk, Będomin Department
2001 Warszawa – Alisar Gallery
2001 Gdańsk – Państwowa Opera Bałtycka
2001 Gdańsk Wrzeszcz – Alicja’s Gallery
2002 Gdańsk – Portal Gallery
2002 Radom – Rogatka Gallery of Radom University of Technology
2004 solo presentation of works at the Amber Fair
2004 Zielona Góra – Jadwiga Bocho–Kokot Gallery
2005 solo presentation of works at the Amber Fair
2007 Berlin Polish House
2007 Gdańsk solo presentation of works at the Amber Fair
2007 Gdańsk Wrzeszcz – Rosenthal Cafe
2008 Gdańsk solo presentation of works at the Amber Fair
2009 Gdańsk solo presentation of works at the Amber Fair
2009 Iława Nawprost Gallery
2009 Gdańsk Da Vinci Gallery
2010 Gdynia – Riviera Gallery
2010 Gdańsk solo presentation of works at the Amber Fair
2010 Gdańsk Wrzeszcz – Rosenthal Cafe
2013 Gdańsk solo presentation of works at the Amber Fair
2014 Szczecin Kapitańska Gallery – post-workshop exhibition of ceramics and painting
2014 Sopot – Sanatorium Cafe
2014 Ostrołęka – Ostrołęckie Centrum Kultury
2015 Gdańsk – Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury
2015 Szczecin Kapitańska Gallery – post-workshop exhibition of ceramics and painting
2015 Toruń – Dwór Mieszczański