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21 November 2009

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"Jozef Szajna - Teart"
Warsaw, DAP Gallery, December 18, 2002 - January 31, 2003
languages: Polish  / English 
 

People in many countries around the world know the works and person of Jozef Szajna. This year the exceptional painter, graphic artist, theatre director, stage designer, playwright, and educator celebrates his 80th birthday and his 55th year in the arts.

Jozef Szajna,
REMINISCENCJE / REMINISCENCES,
1998
People in many countries around the world know the works and person of Jozef Szajna. This year the exceptional painter, graphic artist, theatre director, stage designer, playwright, and educator celebrates his 80th birthday and his 55th year in the arts. The artist's output as presented in the anniversary exhibition JOZEF SZAJNA - TEART encourages viewers to reflect upon human fate and the meaning and value of life. In his works Szajna seems to produce a vision of the world as an entity that is disintegrating, that is on a course towards self-annihilation.

Jozef Szajna was born on March 13, 1922 in Rzeszow. He participated in fighting against the invading Germans in September of 1939 and was among the defenders of the city of Lviv. Szajna subsequently became one of the first prisoners of the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

After World War II, he studied graphic and stage design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (graduating in 1953). He debuted as a stage designer at the People's Theatre (Teatr Ludowy) in Nowa Huta near Krakow, a theatre of which he later became managing and artistic director. Szajna also worked with Jerzy Grotowski on AKROPOLIS / ACROPOLIS at the 13 Row Theatre (Teatr 13 Rzedow) in Opole. In the 1970s he founded and managed the Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz STUDIO Arts Centre in Warsaw. At the Sao Paulo Art Biennale in 1989, critics named Szajna one of the five greatest artists of the 20th century.

Jozef Szajna is among the most original of contemporary artists, someone who uses his work to propose a very personal vision of the world as an entity that is disintegrating and on a course towards self-annihilation. His experiences in the death camp have deeply influenced his work in all realms of creativity, which he very much approaches as "the gift of a second life." He created his own, highly metaphorical brand of visual theatre (productions have included "REPLIKA / REPLICA", "WITKACY", "DANTE", "CERVANTES", "MAJAKOWSKI / MAYAKOVSKY"), and produced shocking spatial installations, dedicating the most renowned, titled "REMINISCENCJE / REMINISCENCES", to victims of violence. His paintings and collages incorporate all manner of degraded objects and materials, including fragments of photographs, tatters of clothing, old shoes - things salvaged from the "trash bin of memory." His series of paintings and compositions, among them "MROWISKA / ANT HILLS", "GEBY / MUGS", "DWOJE / DOUBLES", "CIENIE / SHADOWS", "INZYNIERIA GENETYCZNA / GENETIC ENGINEERING", are a labyrinth of discourses on the paths through life, experiences, and reflections of humans.

JOZEF SZAJNA - TEATR / JOZEF SZAJNA - THEATRE
Exhibition opening: December 17, 2002, 6 p.m.

HVA Gallery / House of the Visual Artist Gallery
(Galeria DAP)
ul. Mazowiecka 11a, Warszawa
tel. (+48 22) 827 76 88, 826 23 61

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