Jerzy Duda Gracz, PAWEŁ MINKIEWICZ, 1975

40.0 x 40.0cm - oil, fiberboard, collage signed l.d.: DUDA. GRACZ. 1975

On the reverse, on the g. strip of the loom, signed p: 519 [in circle], med: 92.700.000,-, l.: PAWEŁ MINKIEWICZ.

On the plate a stamp permitting export abroad.



The 1970s in Duda Gracz's life were a time of tightening ties with the Polish stage and television and theater community. The artist, who at the time published drawings in the satirical "Szpilek", collaborated with, among others, the Radio and Television Publishing House, Polski Nagrania and the Strong Group Under the Call, led by his friend Kazimierz Grześkowiak. In 1975, TVP aired the program Songs from the Studio, where guests such as Wojciech Młynarski, Wojciech Siemion and Danuta Rinn performed in the painter's atelier. Numerous acquaintances were not without influence on art. In addition to designing graphic covers for volumes of poetry, cabaret sets or album covers, there was a whole series of portraits of personalities from related fields. As a rule, they were not painted on commission, being a testament to warm relations and a natural form of expression of appreciation. Duda Gracz often went far beyond rendering the physiognomic and character traits of a person in them. The images were expanded to include attributes of the profession and other props symptomatic of the portrayed, and even placed in specific settings: fantastic landscapes (see Image 44. Roboki - Portrait of K. Grzeskowiak, 1970), or interiors (see Poet II. Portrait by Ryszard Marek Groński, 1974 - offered at the Agra-Art auction on March 19, 2023). All these criteria are met by the painting presented in the catalog, depicting Pawel Minkiewicz (1924-1979) - assistant cinematographer (e.g. Ashes and Diamonds, 1958), camera operator (A Separation, 1960), actor (Slide, 1972), member of the Polish Filmmakers Association. Attached at the top, a jacquard fabric like a curtain in a theater opens a view of a modest room where a man's life is concentrated. The viewer exploring this private micro-space, squeezed between the stove, the bed, and the cistern, is surprised to discover that the gray everyday life has a second meaning. The half-naked filmmaker is manned by a group of small caricatures: a wrinkled old woman, a rat with a human face and a naked, lustful woman. The presence of unusual characters, evoking rather negative associations, contrasts with the calm and noble face of Minkiewicz - apparently accustomed to their company. As Tadeusz Nyczek argued, such dissonances were meant to deepen the characterization of the model: Duda Gracz is hardly interested in "pure" worlds of customs, behavior, appearance. Something always has to be juxtaposed with something, even if on the basis of a simple juxtaposition (...) It is no coincidence that the artist searches even in his loved ones, not excluding himself or his family, for those very features that blur the unambiguity and uniformity of the model; it is also no coincidence that these friends (...) are, as it were, inherently composed of a multicolored mixture of spiritual, moral and cultural traits. (T. Nyczek, Photographs from the Carousel. About Jerzy Duda-Gracz [in:] Retrospective. Jerzy Duda-Gracz, Cracow 2015, p. 13.)

In Duda-Gracz's approach, a portrait gains a universal dimension - it is not only a perfect representation of physiognomy, but also a mirror in which one can look through and learn something about oneself.



♣ A fee will be added to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, based on 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, Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk, the Jagiellonian University Museum in Collegium Maius in Krakow, 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.