Artist of the day: Artist of the day, January 11, 2020: Jerzy Duda-Gracz, a Polish painter, illustrator, graphic artist and scenographer (#888)

Jerzy Duda-Gracz (1941-2004) was a Polish painter, illustrator, graphic artist, and scenographer. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1968. His work was exhibited in over 187 national and international exhibitions and can be seen at the Polish National Museum in Warsaw, in the museum of the Jagellonian University in Kraków, in the Collegium Maius, the Museum of Earth at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Municipal Museum in Ghent, the BAWAG Foundation in Vienna, the Vatican Collection and in galleries and collections in many other countries such as the Louvre in France.

Duda-Gracz's art contains elements of both grotesque and irony on one hand and of sentimentalism and nostalgia on the other. The latter derives from a world which, in the painter's own words, 'departs, dies, which has more in common with the world of dreams, childhood memories' – the 'post-industrial landscape world'. He is, however, known primarily for works with more bitter overtones that comment on the socio-political reality of the past decades, beginning with communist-era Poland and ending with the beginnings of the transformation. Formally, his art did not evolve much throughout the decades. Duda-Gracz's paintings, thinly-layered but with visible brush strokes, became less color driven but stuck to the same expression of realism and grotesque. On one hand, he tapped into – what was often noticed – Polish painting from the late 19th and early 20th century (especially Witold Wojtkiewicz) and Flemish 17th century realism, but also into contemporary and local styles.

The longing after the post-industrial landscape grew inside him as he lived in Katowice – the very center of industrial Poland. Another big influence was his hometown, Częstochowa. In the years 2000-2001, he painted Jasna Góra Calvary for the Częstochowa monastery. Duda-Gracz was a moralist not only as a painter of religious paintings but also as a painter of secular genre allegorical images of everyday life.

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