157 / 2358, from the series: Blue

The first showing of canvases from the „Blue” cycle took place in 1993. It was then, at the Zderzak gallery in Kraków, that Edward Dwurnik showed several of the 94 already completed compositions kept in a similar tonality, with horizons raised to the edge of the painting, giving the impression of abstract painting. He also claimed that these paintings were meant to be viewed from above. The inspiration for creating the cycle of works was, for the artist, a story recounted to him by Teresa Gierzyńska about an exhibition of marine painting she had seen in the USA. The second impulse for Edward Dwurnik to create large-format canvases, often in shades of Prussian blue, where the surface of the canvas was systematically cleared of layers of paint, were his seaside travels. In this cycle the painter did not strive to achieve a purely abstract form; on the contrary - his aim was to create a work preserving the appropriate proportions between realistic and abstract representation. Only in 2000, in the canvases from the „Twenty-fifth” cycle, is a clear turn towards non-figurative art and action painting visible.