Jarosław Modzelewski

Jarosław Modzelewski (b. 1955 in Warsaw) is a painter, draughtsman and teacher, regarded as one of the most important figures of Polish contemporary art. In 1975-1980 he studied at the Faculty of Painting of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts under Stefan Gierowski, from whom he received his diploma; from 1982 he was a teacher at his alma mater, running a painting studio until 2020.

In 1982 Modzelewski co-founded Gruppa (1982-1992) - together with Ryszard Grzyb, Paweł Kowalewski, Włodzimierz Pawlak, Marek Sobczyk and Ryszard Woźniak - one of the most spectacular phenomena in the history of Polish painting, whose works and actions expressed the tensions of the martial-law period and contested ossified academicism; he also co-published its magazine „Oj dobrze już”. In the initial period he used abstracted signs and stencil-multiplied motifs („Storming Dolphins”, 1981), only to return to figural scenes from the end of the 1980s.

Modzelewski's mature painting is characterised by a far-reaching simplification and an almost schematic treatment of human figures, performing the gestures and activities described in the titles - hence the description „a painter of the icons of everyday life”. In his paintings he takes up political, historical, religious and existential threads, while preserving an unobtrusive commentary and a tender relationship to nature. A laureate of, among others, the Polityka Passport (1998) and the Jan Cybis Award (2004); the survey exhibition „A Country on the Vistula” was shown by the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (2023). His works are in the collections of the National Museums in Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań and Wrocław, the Museum of Art in Łódź and the Zachęta.