Henryk Cześnik

Henryk Cześnik (b. 1951 in Sopot) is a painter, draughtsman and stage designer, a professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk and one of the most important creators of Polish contemporary art. Inseparably bound up with the Pomeranian milieu, he began his studies in 1972 at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (today the Academy of Fine Arts) and defended his diploma in 1977 in the studio of Professor Kazimierz Ostrowski, his master. He linked his whole career with his alma mater: he received the title of professor in 1994, and since 2003 he has headed a painting studio as a full professor.

In the landscape of Polish art Cześnik occupies a place apart, eluding simple classifications. His painting is a theatre of tensions, in which brutal expression meets fragile existence. A dark, oneiric mood, a neurotic line and a contrarily treated religious subject matter are his favourite tools; using grotesque, irony and black humour, he is able to speak of the most important matters. At the centre of his recognisable stylistics stand distorted figures, naked bodies and tormented torsos, and the recurring motifs - the hospital ward, the degradation of matter, the menacing memento mori - make his art a poignant record of the human condition.

Equally important is the material layer of his works. Cześnik became famous for painting on unusual, „poor” supports - old hospital sheets, sacks, tablecloths or recycled papers - in which the traces of use, the stains and the abrasions become an element of the composition, reinforcing the authenticity of the message. This is a haptic, almost tangible painting, building a strong, unsettling aura.

Cześnik has exhibited since the 1970s and has over a hundred solo exhibitions to his name, in renowned galleries and museums in Poland and abroad - including in Paris, Odessa, Prague and Stockholm. His works are in the collections of the National Museums in Warsaw, Gdańsk and Szczecin, as well as in the museums of Moscow, Sofia and Dresden and in numerous private collections. He is the laureate of many awards - including the Gold „Gloria Artis” Medal, the „Meritorious for Polish Culture” badge and the Kazimierz Ostrowski Award (2019) for fidelity to the ideas of his master. He is also occasionally an actor (he appeared in, among others, „Sztos” and „Boys Don't Cry”) and the author of essays. Painfully sincere and technically bravura, Cześnik's painting remains one of the strongest voices of Polish expression of the last half-century.