Janusz Orbitowski

Janusz Orbitowski (1940, Kraków - 2017, Kraków) was a painter and graphic artist, a full professor of the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts and one of the most consistent representatives of geometric abstraction in Poland. In 1967 he graduated with distinction from the Faculty of Painting and Graphic Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, as a student of Adam Marczyński; from 1970 he was professionally associated with his alma mater, where from 1993 he headed the Chair of Drawing.

Most of Orbitowski's paintings are built from rhombuses, squares and rectangles and bear neutral or mathematical titles - „Compositions”, „Reliefs”, „7/76”. At the end of the 1960s the artist gave his geometric constructions three-dimensionality: modules glued onto the surface form reliefs, mostly white and monochrome. The guiding principles of his works were space, light, movement and their mutual relations; in time he enriched the compositions with rhythms of thin slats and rods, and from the 1980s he also created drawings kept in the spirit of geometric abstraction.

Although his art is based on pure geometry, the forms can be ambiguous - they take on an organic character, resemble monumentalised fragments of plants, and some compositions are not free of symbolism. Orbitowski was a holder of grants from the Fondazione Romana, the Kościuszko Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and from 1991 he was associated with the Starmach Gallery in Kraków. His works are in the collections of the National Museums in Kraków, Warsaw and Wrocław, the Museum of Art in Łódź and the Zachęta.