July 9, 2024
Disappearing portraits of Jewish women can be seen at the Polish Institute in Berlin at Paweł Kowalewski's exhibition. The new exhibition of works from the series “Power and Beauty” opens on July 9.
Disappearing portraits of Jewish women can be seen at the Polish Institute in Berlin at Paweł Kowalewski's exhibition. The new exhibition of works from the series “Power and Beauty” opens on July 9. In 2015, Paweł Kowalewski created a series of disappearing paintings. “Power and beauty. A Very Subjective History of Polish Mothers” are large-format portraits of women of Jewish origin living during World War II, including a portrait of the artist's mother. The works were painted with a special paint, which will fade quite a bit over time, turning portraits into abstract shadows. It is a commentary on the human tendency to forget, disrespect or even contempt for history, which the artist perceives as extremely threatening. The project is a tribute to the young women who lived during the war and the heyday of the two largest totalitarian regimes. The works are accompanied by extremely poignant stories of portrayed heroines. The exhibition was presented, among others, at The Artist's House gallery in Tel Aviv, the Museum of Photography in Krakow and the NS-Dokumentationszentrum in Munich. With each exhibition, the works fade more and more, disappear irrevocably. The opening of the exhibition will take place on July 9, 2024 from 19.00. The exhibition will last until August 30, 2024. Admission is free. You can't miss it!
October 15 to January 16, 2022
The State Art Gallery in Sopot invites you to the exhibition “We and dogs, dogs and us”. The exhibition will be open from October 15 to January 16, 2022. The exhibition will feature two works by Paweł Kowalewski from the 1980s — the canvas “Angry Red Dog on a Green Background Keeps Watch” and the showcase “Little Lush Dog”.
Curator: Bogusław Deptuła Dogs are an extremely frequent and eagerly taken up artistic theme by artists. They appear with the greatest masters in the history of Polish and international art, both in the works of self-taught artists or in anonymous paintings. The exhibition “We and Dogs, Dogs and Us”, organized by the State Art Gallery in Sopot, aims to raise awareness of the ubiquity of “man's best friend” — that is, a dog, in our environment, and therefore in the world of fine arts. The exhibition is planned as a broad panorama of Polish art, presenting various artistic fields — paintings, sculptures, drawings — from the 18th century, through the art of the 19th century and the interwar twenties, to the present day. It will be realized on the basis of public collections (National Museum in Warsaw, Regional Museum in Toruń) and private (collectors, artists and private individuals). The exhibition aims to reveal the ubiquity of the dog motif in art over the centuries. The variety of styles and aesthetics will reveal a wealth of possible searches and solutions. It is not about classifying canine images, but rather about the pleasure of meeting them, both aesthetic and mental, because the role and importance of dogs in the human environment, even though it is constantly changing, still remains extremely important. During the exhibition we will be able to see the works of such artists as: Mirosław Bałka, Olga Boznańska, Bolesław Cybis, Ignacy Czwartos, Oskar Dawidzki, Edward Dwurnik, Maksymilian Gierymski, Grzegorz Kozera, Łukasz Huculak, Maria Jarema, Filip Kalkowski, Łukasz Korolkiewicz, Paweł Kowalewski, Tadeusz Makowski, Kazimierz, Mikulski, Jarosław Modzelewski, Karol Palczak, Teresa Pągowska, Sławomir Ratajski, Joanna Rusinek, Agnieszka Sandomierz, Marek Sieńczyk, Marek Sobczyk, Paweł Susid, Ryszard Woźniak, Stanislaw Wyspiański. An exhibition from the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw, the Regional Museum in Torun, the Regional Museum in Bydgoszcz, the Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Warsaw, ZACHĘTA — the National Gallery of Art, the National Theatre in Warsaw, the DESA Auction House, private collections and loans from artists.
September 15, 2021
“Bestiariusz” is a hot and wild position on the publishing market, which arose as a result of the collaboration of an indomitable writer with a rebellious artist, namely Michał Komar and Paweł Kowalewski. This sublime creative duo created a book of spicy fairy tales for adults, drawing ideas straight from the bosom of nature. Kowalewski's feisty dash and Komar's cut pen entertain and teach the reader, while transporting him to the magical world of animals. The adventures of unusual fauna spill out of the 'toothed' cards of the “Bestiary”, delighting our senses with juicy content.
“Animals are different, bloody and bloodless, two-legged, four-legged and legless, swimming, running and flying,” writes Michał Komar, beginning the story about unusual creatures that have inhabited our world for a long time. On the pages of the book we find the Psychopher, about whom you need to learn as much as possible if you want to “understand who man is and what his place is in the plan of Providence”, the Bishop's Fish and the Monk Fish, the Unicorn, the Lion, the Viper, the Sea Centipede or the Ant. All these animals, seemingly so different from each other, have one thing in common: dignity. “Each animal has respect for itself and the place it occupies in the order of nature,” the author writes, arguing that it is false to say that many more animals once lived than today. “Animals, seeing the ineptitude with which man imitates them and experiencing the enormity of embarrassment, decided to hide in human oblivion,” he explains. “Bestiary” fortunately reminds us of them, and the unusual drawings of Paweł Kowalewski allow us to hope that this time we will not forget them again. Every illustration by Paweł Kowalewski is different. Collected together in the “Bestiary”, however, they constitute a whole. Entering the artist's personal world, we will see that the problems that occupy him are eternal, and the language he speaks to us is painfully simple and defenselessly pure — to quote the art critic Anda Rottenberg. Even during his studies at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, Paweł Kowalewski kept expressive notebooks in which he recorded his state of mind. Kowalewski was interested in spontaneous expression of thoughts, forgetting about plastic education, as he says, “freeing the hand” in order to simply be in a natural creative process. It is precisely this spontaneous quality that is contained in the illustrations in the “Bestiary”, and the reader will find in them quite a lot of the cassandric nature of the creator. One of the last drawings, in the epilogue of the book, is by a Polish sculptor and close friend of Kowalewski — Krzysztof M. Bednarski. The “sweaty monument” simply “would not have been sculpted” better by anyone else! The book will be available from September 15 in Empik stores and online sales. “The Bestiary” will be released by Luna House.