Adam Marczyński

Adam Marczyński (1908, Kraków - 1985, Kraków) was a painter, graphic artist, creator of assemblages and reliefs, stage designer and teacher - associated all his life with Kraków and regarded as one of the most important representatives of the Polish avant-garde. He completed his studies at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts (under Władysław Jarocki among others) in 1936; he belonged to the pre-war Kraków Group and took part in its reactivation in 1957. From 1950 he was a professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he ran a painting studio until 1979; he also made stage sets for the Cricot theatre and church polychromes.

His work consistently evolved from early, cubising and surrealising compositions towards abstraction. Around 1960 he created „Concretes” and „Structures” - works of the matter-painting current, in which he replaced the effort of painting texture with concrete material: collages and assemblages of broken, charred slats, veneer, cardboard and corroded sheet metal, inscribed in strict geometric figures.

In the next stage the geometric form came to dominate his works, enriched with movable elements - Marczyński became one of the precursors of kinetic art in Poland (including „Changing Reflections”, the 1st Biennale of Spatial Forms in Elbląg, 1965). In the 1970s he created paintings built from movable coffered panels with hinged flaps, in which an important role was played by colour coming from the reflection of light off their walls - every change of arrangement introduced a new quality of reception. His last works were ascetic, almost monochrome white reliefs. A retrospective exhibition was held at the BWA in Kraków just after his death (1985), and in 2023 - at the National Museum in Kraków („Lyricism and Form”).