Henryk Waniek

Henryk Waniek (b. 1942 in Oświęcim) is a Silesian painter, graphic artist, writer, essayist and art critic, and also an expert on esoteric matters - alchemy, hermeticism, mysticism. He studied at the Faculty of Graphic Art (Katowice branch) of the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, receiving his diploma in 1970. For over forty years he has lived and worked in Brwinów near Warsaw.

Waniek's visual work is counted within the Surrealist current - full of metaphors, allegories and symbols, realised in traditional oil painting; one reviewer called it „magical realism for the demanding”. The artist himself says of himself: „I pass for a painter of magic, the magic of describing the world”. In 1967 he joined the esotericism-fascinated group of painters Oneiron (also called the League of Spiritual Perceptions), whose members turned towards magic, alchemy and the philosophy and religion of the Far East, trying to make artistic use of so-called altered states of consciousness.

Waniek is also an excellent writer - the author of over twenty books (novels, stories, essays), in which he penetrates the historical mysteries and cultural phenomena of Silesia, leading the reader through history, philosophy, alchemy and hermeticism; Professor Magdalena Rabizo-Birek called him „homo symbolicus”. He has taken part in over a hundred exhibitions, held residencies in Italy and the USA, and his works are held, among others, in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw and in the museums of Poznań, Kraków and Bytom.