Stanisław Fijałkowski

Stanisław Fijałkowski (1922, Zdolbuniv - 2020, Łódź) was a painter, graphic artist, teacher and art theorist - one of the most highly regarded Polish artists in the world. During the war, in 1944-1945, he was a forced labourer in Königsberg. In 1946-1951 he studied at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Łódź, where his teacher was Władysław Strzemiński; he became his assistant, and then a professor, dean and vice-rector, linking nearly half a century of work with the school (1947-1993). He belonged to the „Strzemiński circle” - the group of artists gathered around the thought of the author of the „Theory of Vision”.

His contact with Strzemiński left a lasting imprint on his attitude: Fijałkowski's early work remained under the influence of Unism. In the second half of the 1950s he turned towards abstraction, incorporating into the language of geometry the ideas of Surrealism and inspirations from Picasso's work (the „Poets” cycle). His art, however, became a kind of overcoming of abstraction - it moved towards the symbol and the shaping of symbolic meaning. Fijałkowski was fascinated by the theoretical writings of Wassily Kandinsky, which he translated into Polish, and by the thought of Carl Gustav Jung; his meditative, sparing compositions build a private alphabet of recurring signs. From the 1960s he practised graphic art with equal mastery, including in the famous cycle „Motorways”.

His international standing was exceptional. He represented Poland at the São Paulo Biennale (1969) and the Venice Biennale (1972), exhibited at the Tokyo Biennale (1968) and took part in the Wrocław '70 Visual Arts Symposium; he won numerous prizes at international print biennales. He was a laureate of the C.K. Norwid Art Criticism Award (1977) and the Jan Cybis Award (1989), as well as the Gold „Gloria Artis” Medal. His works are in the most prestigious collections in the world - including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Albertina in Vienna, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Art in Łódź. Combining the rigour of geometry with spiritual and symbolic depth, Fijałkowski remains one of the pillars of the Polish post-war avant-garde - and a bridge between the legacy of Strzemiński and contemporary art.