Leszek Knaflewski

Leszek Knaflewski (1960, Poznań - 2014, Poznań) was a visual artist and an outstanding teacher - creator of installations, objects, photographs, drawings, video works and audio performances. In 1980-1985 he studied painting at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznań (today the University of the Arts), in the studio of Jerzy Kałucki. From 1990 he engaged in teaching, running among others the Audiosphere Studio at the Faculty of Multimedia Communication of his alma mater.

In 1983-1990 he co-created the group Koło Klipsa - together with Mariusz Kruk, Wojciech Kujawski and Krzysztof Markowski - associated with the Wielka 19 Gallery in Poznań. The group's manifestations, counted within the current of „post-painting sculpture” and „magical realism”, were conceived as complete, joint works; to emphasise the group authorship the artists refrained from signing their works. Knaflewski's work - also his solo work, signed with the pseudonym KNAF - carried a biting irony and recurring threads of violence and military associations (including „The Ballet of Passive Resistance”, 1993).

From the 1990s his art situated itself on the borderland of the visual arts and music: he built object-instruments, such as „The Electric Coffin”, on which he played and from which he created acoustic spatial installations. He collaborated with many musical formations (Rasa, Sten, Socrealizm, Drum Machina, KOT). His works are held, among others, in the Museum of Art in Łódź and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and his oeuvre has recently been recalled by large exhibitions, including „Ultra-avant-garde. Koło Klipsa and the Poznań Underground of the 1980s” at the National Museum in Poznań (2024).