Jacek Sienicki

Jacek Sienicki (1928, Warsaw - 2000, Warsaw) was a painter, draughtsman and teacher. He completed his studies at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (1948-1954) under Artur Nacht-Samborski, whom he regarded as his master and whose assistant he remained for thirteen years; later, for many years, he ran his own studio at the Faculty of Painting, receiving the title of full professor (1988). Like Sempoliński, he made his debut at the Arsenał exhibition „Against War - Against Fascism” (1955).

Sienicki painted in a limited, muted palette - greys, which he called „a special sensitisation” - sometimes lit up with pure white, striving for the maximum synthesis of the message. Sparing in his means, he at the same time created pictures of an enormous richness of matter, in which the impasto makes the painted object look like a fragment of living tissue. He returned to a few motifs from his immediate surroundings: the studio interior, a single plant and a withering flower, the skull, a scrap of meat, the walls of houses and the human figure.

„One of my colleagues called my work the portraying of objects. I portray studio interiors, flowers (...). Of course I also hope that I am portraying myself”, the artist said. His recognisable, expressive pictures, balancing between figuration and abstraction, are marked by symbolism and a passion for rendering the human condition. He also referred to wartime experiences and current history (the cycles „Holocaust”, „Ruins”, „The Executed”), and in the times of the People's Republic he was involved in the independent culture movement. A laureate of the C.K. Norwid Award (1975) and the independent Jan Cybis Award (1983).