Eugeniusz Markowski, Pyramid, 1980

oil, canvas, 136 x 80 cm signed l.d.: E. Markowski; described at the bottom: I can't help it/I prefer a naked girl to a naked king; dated and described on the stretcher: "PIRAMID" OLEJ 130 x 80; on the stretcher partially inscribed quote from the face of the painting

provenance: private collection, Warsaw
exhibited: Eugeniusz Markowski, DAP Gallery OW ZPAP, Warsaw, March 8 - April 3, 2005;
reproduced in exhibition cat. pp. 110.;
Eugeniusz Markowski. Homo Sapiens, Piękna Gallery, Warsaw, May 20 - June 20, 2016
Reproduced in the exhibition cat. p. 6.

Eugeniusz Markowski (1912 - 2007) Painter, illustrator, professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He participated in many solo exhibitions and significant group exhibitions at home and abroad, including: 1000 Years Polish Art at the Royal Academy of Art in London in 1970; Kunsthalle Mannhaim in 1973; Polish Contemporary Painting at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico in 1975. In 1963 Markowski represented Poland at the São Paulo Biennale.

Art critics point to Soutine, Nolde, Grosz, Dubuffet and Kokoschka as artists close to Markowski, especially his power of expression and way of seeing the world. Bożena Kowalska even believes that with his violent paintings Markowski foreshadowed (almost twenty years in advance) the Neue Wilde movement. As M. Rosiak wrote: "insane and wild, more radical and subversive than the most radical and subversive painting of the young."

Markowski's works are in important museum and private collections around the world, including the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo, D'Arcy Gallery in New York, the Museum of Art in Lodz, and the National Museums in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan and Wroclaw.