Michał Jankowski

Michał Jankowski (b. 1977) is a painter and visual artist. He completed the Institute of Visual Arts at the Faculty of Art of the University of Zielona Góra, defending in 2005 his diploma in the painting studio of Leszek Knaflewski. He lives and works in Zielona Góra.

In his painting - consciously referring to and redefining the traditions of the avant-garde and Surrealism - he ironically depicts the most hidden and cruel human drives. His realistic, meticulously painted canvases show various human types and a broad social spectrum, becoming an allegory of the decline of reality and at the same time an open question about its prospects. An important thread is the radically treated relationship of man with the animal world (the cycle „Set, Little Sun”), and in his later works (the cycle „The Blind”) he subjects his carefully executed pictures to deliberate destruction with a graffiti-like sign of an eye - a call to awaken to the matters of the present that are passed over in silence.

A laureate of a distinction at the 37th Painting Biennale „Bielska Jesień” (2005), he has presented his works at solo exhibitions in Poland and abroad - including at the ŻAK | BRANICKA gallery in Berlin, the Kronika Gallery in Bytom, the BWA in Zielona Góra and the Trafostacja Sztuki in Szczecin. Jankowski's uncompromising, technically refined painting is one of the strongest voices of his generation.