The works will form part of Edward Dwurnik: Pride and Shame, opening on Friday at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. They have previously been exhibited in Paris and the Netherlands but have never been shown in Poland.
Dwurnik, who died in 2018 at the age of 75, created the three-dimensional works during an artist residency in West Germany in 1984. He shaped the large male heads from metal mesh, covered them with canvas and painted their surfaces.
Edward Dwurnik, pictured in 2013. Photo: PAP/Andrzej Rybczyński
His daughter, artist Pola Dwurnik, said the works represented an attempt to bring his painting into three-dimensional space.
"The motif of the head was very prominent in his painting from the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s," said Pola Dwurnik, who chairs the Edward Dwurnik Foundation.
The artist later dismantled and compressed the heads because he could not afford the large vehicle needed to transport them to Poland.
He stored them in the attic of his home, where they remained unknown to his daughter and his wife, photographer Teresa Gierzyńska.
Pola Dwurnik's husband discovered the works in 2019.
The Edward Dwurnik: Pride and Shame exhibition opens on Friday and runs until the end of February at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Photo: Albert Zawada/PAP
The heads do not represent specific people. Instead, they portray emotional states shaped by hardship, frustration, anger, exhaustion, alcohol abuse and sadness.
"They are images of a difficult life," Pola Dwurnik said. "Perhaps they also show pride and shame, as in the title of the exhibition."
Pola Dwurnik poses against the backdrop of her father's works at the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Albert Zawada/PAP
The exhibition presents works from the early 1970s through the 1990s, tracing Dwurnik's response to the social and political transformation of Poland during the final decades of communist rule and the country's transition to democracy.
Curator Łukasz Ronduda described Dwurnik as an outstanding painter with an acute sensitivity to social change.
"He accompanied the transformations of Polish society and represented them in his art,” Ronduda said.
Dwurnik frequently depicted crowds and groups, using individual scenes to build broad portraits of Polish society. His Sportsmen series examined everyday life, social behavior and the compromises people made under communism.
His Workers series addressed the strikes, political conflict and repression of the 1980s, including martial law, which Poland’s communist authorities imposed from December 1981 to July 1983 in an effort to suppress the Solidarity opposition movement.
Ronduda said Dwurnik considered himself a socially engaged artist who was interested in communities and in his own place within them.
His crowded compositions sometimes drew on the tradition of Polish historical painting associated with 19th-century artist Jan Matejko.
Dwurnik came from a family with no connections to the art world and described himself as a boy from a disadvantaged, rough neighborhood.
"He started from nowhere," Ronduda said. "He committed himself to painting and became one of the greatest Polish painters of the 20th century."
The exhibition’s title refers to emotions that the curator said shaped both Dwurnik’s career and Poland’s wider experience of social advancement.
Through art, Dwurnik moved from a disadvantaged background to national recognition. His work also reflected the aspirations of a society in which parents often hoped their children would enjoy greater opportunities and prosperity.
The exhibition runs through February 28.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP