Jerzy Kujawski (1921-1998) - Composition

A very beautiful and rare work (on paper) by the artist Kujawski, dating from around 1960.
Private collection, Paris, unframed.

From postwar surrealism to erotic surrealism

Jerzy Kujawski worked with a large number of artists tied to the post-war surrealist movement. In the second half of the 1940s, Kujawski's art is characterized by surrealist painting, graphic works and drawings that play at the borders between dream and reality. Later, he becomes one of the first lyrical abstract painters devoted to informal abstract painting. In the 1960s, he experiments with different techniques and above all with decalcomanie. Then a major transformation occurs in his art. He abandons abstract art and returns to figurative painting. He then explores the techniques of monotype, tracing (calque) and screen printing — techniques used by pop culture artists. Finally, the surreal technique of body tracing and his erotic obsessions mark his works.

A Polish artist in Paris:

Jerzy Kujawski was born in Ostrow in 1921. First deported with his family to the Wielkopolska region, he would later spend the entire wartime period between Kraków and Warsaw, where he would attend, respectively, Marian Bogusz and the circle of young artists. Thus Jerzy Kujawski counted among his friends Tadeusz Kantor, Tadeusz Brzozowski, and Jerzy Nowosielski, better known by the name Kantor.
In 1945 he settled in Paris to attend the École des Beaux-Arts and entered into the intimate circle of André Breton's friends. Kujawski has always maintained contacts with Polish artists such as Bogusz, Alfred Lenica and Jerzy Skarżyński, and had the opportunity to meet Topor, Alina Szapocznikow, and Roman Cieślewicz. In international exhibitions he presented himself as a Polish painter living in Paris.
Kujawski died in 1998 in Paris, in a certain artistic solitude that he had cultivated since the 1970s.

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