Freedom`s Wings

An exhibition that I am trying to prepare with KW's considerable help is held in my apartment in Jozef Dietl Street in Cracow where I lived as a child with my parents and during my studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, when I was a spokeswoman for the Student Committee of Solidarity(SKS), and the SB (Communist Security Police) searched for and often waited for me outside my house, demanding to show my documents when I was returning home. The exhibition has a somewhat pompous title Wings of Freedom. Not necessarily because it takes place during a pandemic and seems that it should uplift hearts but is it the reason? When on the Ukrainian border there is the barbaric display of strength and Russian-Belarusian military maneuvers pose the question: Will they enter, will they not enter? -after the declaration of the restoration of the USSR by the peace-loving new Tsar of Russia ... and now an armed attack on Ukraine with numerous criminal acts against the civilian population. So terrible a war ...    In this situation, the context of the exhibition changed a lot.
For a long time I have been trying to paint pictures dedicated to dismantling communism and fighting against it in Poland, and also in Lithuania and Ukraine. First of all, they are portraits of people who took part in this fight. My admiration for them, for their courage, determination and love for the Motherland made me start painting their faces. They are, in a sense, a painted praise of Free Poland. I think I have rarely been wrong about their righteous, patriotic motives. However, it started during the communist era with the painting "The Hierarchy of Reds" , composed of 8 mocking portraits of members of Komsomol and the Union of Socialist Youth (ZMS), and other red heroes of the communist regime.
Then I painted a work consisting of 19 small portraits of various people, rather unknown to me, painted from newspapers photos, among them there were also quite faithful images of two little children of my friends: Helenka and Antoś. There were also a few grotesque portraits and masks that were created before 1989 during the communist rule in Poland - the painting is entitled "The communism has died, but do we really want to be normal?" During that period, two large group portraits were also created: The Cellar Under the Rams portrait (the most famous Krakow cabaret) entitled "Desiderata" and the Theatre of the Eighth Day portrait. I was lucky to meet a few actors and the musicians of my beloved Theater in person .and they spent a night on the floor in my small studio.
Next I started to paint three series of portraits at the same time: Survivors of Student Committee of Solidarity, People of Solidarity, and People of Free Poland. The first series began with Anka Szwed's portrait. She was a philologist, spokeswoman for the SKS, a co-organizer NSZZ "Solidarność" (Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity") in Cracow. She was very brave. Every other day she was arrested for 48 hours, and repeatedly thrown out of subsequent rented apartments. She was a friend of mine. She used to visit me in my studio. Once It occurred to me to make a portrait of her. She was supposed to pose for it and was happy about it, but already then she was very sick. I painted the portrait in 2006 on the basis of a photo that I received from her husband after Ania's death.
Later I managed to paint Józef Baran , the co-organizer of Independent Committee of Peasants' Self-Defense of the Rzeszów Region and Self-governing Trade Union of Individual Farmers "Solidarity" (Rural Solidarity ), who fortunately could pose for me a little. (Józef visited me in my studio when he was hiding during the martial law - he didn't even tell me about it! ). Later I painted double portraits of Bronisław and Iwona Wildstein , and Jan and Anna Polkowski , and also portraits of Elżbieta Krawczyk - a Little Sister of Jesus (a community of Catholic religious sisters), surgeon wonderful doctor of soul and body, with whom I used to visit students' dormitories to get flyers during the times of SKS, and of Małgorzata Kotarba , co-organizer of the teachers' " Solidarity ", an employee of the Board of Education and Upbringing, who later founded the publishing house "Paganini", of Bogusław Bek , a co-organizer of the teachers' " Solidarity", a long-term school and junior high school director, a researcher at the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) and of Krzysztof Bzdyl , a co-founder of KPN, (Confederation of Independent Poland), organizer of, among others, in 1981 (when military junta WRON announced the introduction of the martial law) the strike at the MPK (Municipal Transport Company) depot in Krakow, whom I appreciate very much as a KPN politician and I had the opportunity to meet at an SKS meeting. I included into this group of works the "Self-Portrait in a Red Cobweb" painted at the time when SLD (post-communist party) won the elections (2001), and a portrait of my husband Krzysztof Włudarski " I'm leaving ", who is passionate about photography, including duck photography, about which he cares especially. The latest is a Stanisław Pyjas' portrait, but unfortunately I did not meet him. I approached the SKS, which arose as a protest against this terrible crime of murdering him (1977) by the SB for his activity in the KOR (Workers Defence Commitee), one year after his death. It was a tough decision to make this portrait, I am sure, exceeding my strength as an ordinary uncertain of artistic skills person.
In 1996, using 30 small portraits of the aforementioned series, I put together the painting entitled "Let's shoot our thoughts into one fire ..." (The title was suggested by a fellow graphic artist - Przemek Zawadzki.) There are the portraits of: Janusz Korwin Mikke, Aleksander Hall, Jadwiga Staniszkis, Jerzy Niesiołowski, Marian Krzaklewski, Maciej Jankowski, Maciej Iłowiecki, Wiesław Chrzanowski, Jan Olszewski, Antoni Macierewicz, Zbigniew Romaszewski, Tomasz Wołek, Adam Strzembosz, Jarosław Kaczyński and Lech Kaczyński, Jan Parys, Antoni Pietrzyk, Wiesław Walendziak, Jerzy Rulewski, Adam Michnik, Jacek Kuroń, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Gabriel Janowski, Lech Wałęsa, Leszek Moczulski, Ryszard Bugaj, Dariusz Fikus, Zbigniew Brzeziński, and Władysław Bartoszewski. Years later, I had to paint red question marks on three portraits, but then after the fall of the communist government in Poland, I considered all the portrayed people as the saints of Polish Freedom.
As a part of the above-mentioned cycles, I also painted a few individuals very dear to Poland: John Paul II , Father Jerzy Popiełuszko , the spiritual father of the SKS Jan Andrzej Kłoczowski, the Dominican friar and professor of the great wisdom and bravery , Wojciech Morawski, the Dominican friar from the family of a Warsaw insurgent. (His mother and sister looked after me in the hospital in Poznań), who is an ordinary penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary College in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. He lives in Rome and is now seriously ill after an accident. I knew him before the time he chose the monastery.
I also painted the poets beloved by Poles who opposed the communism system: Stanisław Barańczak and Zbigniew Herbert as well as the aforementioned portraits of Jan Polkowski with his wife Anna and a portrait of Bronisław Wildstein, the founder of the SKS, a great writer and sometimes, in a sense, the poet as well as a journalist to whom we owe access to the priceless Wildstein List. I painted a portrait of him with his wife Iwona. I also executed a portrait of the uncompromising politician Janusz Pałubicki and completed after a long delay a portrait of Jerzy Buzek, now a member of the European Parliament.
Finally, I turned to family portraits, perhaps more successfully than before, because I had painted them for a long time, but it was only two years ago that I dared to make a portrait of my grandfather Władysław Martini with his wife, grandmother Zofia. The Grandfather was a soldier of Piłsudski's legion and as a railway engineer was the head of the railway road division in the Sambor district. When the Soviets liquidated the Polish administration in 1940, he was imprisoned, taken to Kazakhstan and there, tormented, died. Grandma returned to Poland and settled in Krakow - above her bed hung a beautifully framed Our Lady of Ostra Brama, brought from the borderlands, whom I loved especially as a child. Grandma Zosia's stories about the borderlands and her family were very interesting and funny for me, but they also taught me patriotism till it hurt. Grandma ran a large-scale charity kitchen for my grandfather's employees and their families, the so-called railway families. She recalled that once scrambled eggs were made from 60 eggs and one of them was stale, then all the scrambled eggs had to be discarded.
In 2021, I painted a portrait of my brother Grześ. The texts used in the painting were quotes from his sayings and important statements. At school, my brother had an inappropriate attitude towards the Russian language, which was compulsory in the People's Republic of Poland, and, as a result, he was thrown out of the class by teachers, stood behind the door of the class and had no grade for this honorable subject on his final school certificate. It was, I think, a phenomenon on the national scale, but it also a nice document to the school authorities, who dared to issue such a certificate. I still managed to send my brother a photo of the portrait that was barely finished, a few days before he passed away.
Influenced by important events, especially related the demise of communism, I also painted some figural compositions. That is how the following paintings were created: "To Lithuanian Brothers" - the picture dedicated to the uprising in Lithuania, "You will win in the Name of God" - a painting referring to John Paul II's visit to Ukraine and Maidan, and a picture of "Archangel Michael killing the Devil "- also dedicated to Ukraine. I also recently painted the "Women of Freedom of Belarus".
In contrast, in the painting "The Freedom Examination", I tried to refer to the threat to the country with the Freedom symbol on its national monument when the World Trade Center was attacked. I also dedicated a less serious small picture "Disappearing stripes" to the problems of the USA.
Polish problems have been taken up by (in my honest opinion) multi-figure paintings: "Scenes from Life", "Hope to Enter Europe", "Independence" as well as "A Red String" - it concerns a terrifying, tragic catastrophe, but I would prefer to leave the audience to do the guesswork.
On the other hand, a particularly lucky event for Poland - the presidential election in 2020, for the result of which I prayed sincerely while painting - I allowed myself to celebrate with the image of the presidential couple Andrzej Duda and Agata Kornhauser Duda, but ... as a sign of the pandemic time - in masks.
With a pinch of salt in the painter's eye, I treat the little "Angels", which I have been painting for every Christmas for many years, at the instigation of the aforementioned friend Ania Szwed-Śniadowska. Recently, angels have been carrying some political messages, important not only to us Poles, I think, and usually they carry a carol on their wings.
I also think that, in a sense, the small images of the so-called Złotówczak entitled "Stay" and Eurak entitled "Globetrotter" with the relevant coins on their eyes are universal too.

Cracow   2022 . 02

carried out within the framework of the
scholarship of the Minister of Culture
and National Heritage in Poland