Jerzy Duda Gracz, BRZEGI - JUNE 4/87, 1987

77.5 x 63.0 cm - oil, fiberboard signed l.d.: DUDA GRACZ . 1139/87 .

On the reverse on the board m.g. author's sticker with details of the painting.



Located near Bukowina Tatrzanska, the village of Brzegi was one of the villages the artist liked to visit for plein-air painting trips. Regularly visited since 1975, it became an inexhaustible source of inspiration for him. On the basis of notes, sketches and photographs taken "in the field" the first views of the Tatra Mountains were created. They belonged to the intimate and inaccessible to the public area of painting of the popular expositor and publicist. Only in the "provincial-community paintings" (from 1986) did elements of the Tatra landscape begin to penetrate the official mainstream. The series, which was continued by the painter until the end of his life, was born in the aforementioned highland village: There [in Brzegi] I studied and painted for my own use desert landscapes - there I recovered the proportions of thought and spirit, lost in life, in the hustle and bustle of civilization, in the chaos of social and political life [...] The strange charms of this village and its inhabitants, the longings and raptures experienced there, began to situate themselves invariably in the reality, the background of which was the landscape of the village of Brzegi. A series of provincial-commune paintings formally began in this village. Probably, it must have started there by God's providence, since today, due to my ailing, battered heart, I am not allowed to go there, and all these paintings reveal a deep affinity with my experience of Brzegi (quoted in Jerzy Duda Gracz. Painting, BWA Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, 24 I - 15 III 1997).



♣ to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, will be added a fee resulting from the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)

Jerzy Duda Gracz (Częstochowa 1941 - Łagów 2004)- painter, illustrator, stage designer, educator. He received his diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow at the Department of Graphics in Katowice in 1968. In 1976-82 he was a lecturer at the academy, then a professor at the Silesian University in Katowice. He also taught at the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw (1992-2001).
His paintings are characterized by technical virtuosity and attention to detail. He practiced art in the broadly defined realist convention with dominant figure deformation and grotesque. He created a world of unmasking, using the language of journalism and allegory. He is the author of several major projects, including the "Transfiguration" plafond in the church in Toporovo (1995) and the "Golgotha of Jasna Gora" series in the Monastery of the Pauline Fathers in Czestochowa (2000/2001). The artist has had more than 180 solo exhibitions at home and abroad (including Berlin, London, Paris, Moscow, Rome, Vienna, Florence, Düsseldorf, Chicago, New Delhi, Munich, New York and others). He participated in about 300 national exhibitions and international presentations of Polish art. He represented Poland, among others, at the XLI Art Biennale in Venice in 1984, at the XX and XXI World Art Fairs in Cologne in 1986 and 1987, and at EXPO '92 in Seville. Jerzy Duda Player's paintings are in the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw, Cracow, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk, the Jagiellonian University Museum in Collegium Maius in Cracow, the Museum of the Earth of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the art collection at Jasna Gora in Czestochowa and other district and city museums, and in private collections, including those of W. Ochman and W. Fibak; abroad - in the collections of the Uffizi in Florence, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Ghent City Museum, the "BAWAG" Foundation in Vienna and the Vatican Collection, as well as in the galleries and collections of Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Israel, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA, Venezuela, the UK, Italy and Hungary.