Eugeniusz Markowski

Eugeniusz Markowski (1912, Warsaw - 2007, Warsaw) was a painter, draughtsman and stage designer, and also a journalist and diplomat and a professor of painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. He studied in the studio of Tadeusz Pruszkowski, completing his coursework in 1938. After the September campaign he made his way to Rome, where he stayed until 1950 (associated with the group Libera Associazione Arti Figurative and getting to know both the classics of the Renaissance and the Futurists), and in 1950-1955 he lived in Canada. He returned to Poland in 1955; he made his second debut with an acclaimed exhibition at the Zachęta in 1962.

Markowski belonged to the current of the new figuration. The protagonist of his paintings is the human being subjected to the pressure of negative emotions - a deformed little monster, half funny, half tragic; his vision of human nature is ruthless, based on primitive passions and cruelty. The rich texture, grotesque expression and force of colour bring his art close to art brut and the work of Dubuffet, although references to antiquity and the Renaissance and a striving for an underlying harmony are also present in it.

Critics set him alongside Soutine, Nolde, Grosz and Kokoschka, and Bożena Kowalska judged that with his brutal paintings he foreshadowed - by almost two decades - the Neue Wilde movement. He represented Poland at the São Paulo Biennale (1963) and was shown at prestigious exhibitions of Polish art abroad, including „1000 Years of Polish Art” at the Royal Academy in London (1970). His works are in important museum collections, including the Museum of Art in Łódź and the National Museums in Szczecin and Poznań.