Marek Śnieciński

Konrad Jarodzki
a monograph

INTRODUCTION

Konrad Jarodzki is one of the most important figures in the post-war history of the Wrocław university of fine arts. On the one hand, this fact stems from the significance of his artistic achievements, and on the other hand – from the multidirectional impact he exerted on the shape and identity of the university, with which he was associated for many decades.

Jarodzki was primarily a painter and draftsman; however, his oeuvre includes also many architectural designs and realisations. He also treated his numerous university duties and activities, such as leading a painting and drawing studio or performing the function of a dean and later of a rector, as an area of creative work. For the artist, it was a specific creation, possibly on multiple occasions more difficult and demanding than the solitary, focused work of a painter locked away in his own studio. Since that type of activity constituted teamwork and necessitated dealing with various external, not always favourable conditions.

Jarodzki was a rather reserved, enigmatic, and reticent man, and yet – endowed with true charisma. He did not impose his own concepts, themes, or aesthetic solutions on students, but required them to think for themselves. He also showed them that art is a space for meeting and dialogue. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was engaged in the creative endeavours of the Wrocław School (later: Wrocław Group) and he belonged to the circle of its most distinguished representatives. His paintings rendered him as one of the most recognisable, most individual and distinctive Polish painters.

His works still reveal the temperament of a perfectionist, but it is worth bearing in mind that the aesthetic perfection of drawing or painting structures and compositions was never a goal in itself for the artist. Instead, it was a tool by means of which he could address important topics in his paintings, express his own fascinations and delights as well as existential fears and threats.

Konrad Jarodzki was born on 31^st December 1927 in Zaklików, Podkarpacie, and spent his childhood in the Lublin district. In the years 1934–1939, he attended the General School in Tomaszów Lubelski, but the outbreak of World War II disrupted his education. The family, after moving several times, lived through the occupation in Wolbrom, located in the north of Kraków. During the wartime, his education took place exclusively at home. It was only at the end of the war after the front passed, in the winter of 1944/1945, when it was possible for Jarodzki to return to the east of the country, to Lublin, where he resumed his education and passed his matriculation examination. In 1948, he began studying mathematics in Lublin, but after the first year he abandoned it and moved to Wrocław, because here, at the University of Science and Technology, he had an opportunity to study architecture, which was definitely a greater educational temptation than mathematics. This decision – as it turned out later – determined Jarodzki’s whole life because then he permanently tied his fate to Wrocław and the Lower Silesia. He gained his architectural education in the years 1949–1956, but even before graduating, in 1955, he started studying at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Wrocław, joining the painting studio ran by Eugeniusz Geppert. He studied with, among others, Jadwiga Żemojtel and Wojciech Paluszak, and his slightly older colleagues were Alfons Mazurkiewicz and Józef Hałas. In 1958, Jarodzki added a master’s degree in fine arts to his first architectural diploma.

After graduating from architectural studies (1957) the young artist started working in the design office Miastoprojekt [CityDesign]. He was associated with it professionally until 1969. The urban structure of Wrocław, destroyed at the end of the war, posed a number of challenges for architects, which they had to face in the course of design and implementation works. In 1958, the team led by Kazimierz Bieńkowski, which included Jarodzki, prepared many important, prestigious realisations, such as the plan of the Pod Jaworami [Under Sycamores] estate in Krzyki or the comprehensive development plan for the area comprised by today’s Legiony Square (formerly PKWN). In both locations, Jarodzki designed point buildings which – according to historians of architecture – are among ‘the best realisations of residential architecture in the post-war Wrocław.’¹¹ A. Gabiś, Całe morze budowania. Wrocławska architektura 1956–1970, Wrocław 2018, p. 97. ↩︎

The point buildings at the then Karol Świerczewski Street (today Józef Piłsudski Street) in 1961 were awarded the ‘Mister of Wrocław’ award, granted by the readers of the daily ‘Słowo Polskie’ [Polish Word].²² Ibidem, pp. 89-91 ↩︎

MOTIF OF A HEAD – BETWEEN

ABSTRACTION AND FIGURATION

In the 1960s it seemed that architecture would become the most important area of Jarodzki’s creative activity; however, despite his numerous design duties, the artist began focusing more and more intensely on painting and drawing. At that time, he mainly worked on perfecting his painting technique, and also attempted to define the aesthetics, subject matter and style of his paintings.

He made those choices and formulated his artistic path by entering into a dialogue with the traditions represented by teachers who were working at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław,

most importantly by Geppert. Thus – as Andrzej Jarosz aptly pointed out – the canon of that time, to which young Wrocław artists mostly referred, was mainly Kraków colourism and French post-impressionism.³³ A. Jarosz, Alfons Mazurkiewicz, Wrocław 2017, p. 9. ↩︎ Developing those traditions was neither obvious nor problem-free at that time – artists, including young painting adepts, were subject to various pressures and temptations. On the one hand, they included the ideologised formulas of socialist realism imposed by the ruling party, somewhat softened after 1956 and broken in Poland from the very beginning with expressive grotesque and specific existentialism, which constituted forms of reacting to war traumas. On the other hand, there was a strong influence of universalist temptations of abstraction, informel, painting of gesture or painting of matter, which was setting the tone for European and world art. The influence of these tendencies (inter alia the painting of matter) can already be noticed in early works of Jarodzki, for example, in the painting Hell – Heaven from 1960: a gloomy, dense, impasto-painted composition, in which dark fragments of the canvas are illuminated by glowing reds that seem to be the colour of a dying down fire.

In 1963, Jarodzki started to create the first series of paintings with a distinct author’s mark – Heads and Portraits. In these works, with titles evoking classical painting themes, the artist was balancing on the border between figuration and abstraction. The figurative element was actually just a pretext here; the author clearly did not strive for physiognomic faithfulness, and the image of a head became for him a comfortable, well-established by tradition motif, due to which he could conduct aesthetic-formal, and later philosophical-existential analysis in his paintings. Mariusz Hermansdorfer mentioned that in these works ‘the form of a head is reduced to a painting ideogram – it is a pretext, an artistic sign with its own content, independent of the original.’⁴⁴ M. Hermansdorfer, Konrad Jarodzki, [in:] Konrad Jarodzki. ‘Here it comes’ [exhibition catalogue, the National Museum in Wrocław, III 2008], Wrocław 2008, p. 11. ↩︎

These works reveal features so typical of Jarodzki’s artistic temperament: he was not, by any means, a rebel or revolutionary, but rather an introvert and individualist who – though he looked around carefully, analysing various phenomena, attitudes, and trends in the world of art – was looking for his own path into painting and he followed it consistently. The main role in this process can be ascribed to discussions and creative debates which were conducted among the members of the so-called Wrocław School (1961–1967) and the Wrocław Group (1967–1976). However, while Jarodzki was participating in various joint ventures and exhibitions, he was at the same time, to some extent, a separate artist who was cultivating his independence.⁵⁵ See A. Kostołowski, ‘Here it comes’, [in:] Konrad Jarodzki…, p. 5. ↩︎

Initially, the works from both series reveal a certain linearity, sketchiness and geometrisation, visible, for example, in the paintings Face and Face II from 1963. Similar aesthetics also appears in some later works, such as Three Heads from 1968, but also in Conversation (1970) or in the series Busts (1970). It seems, however, that formal and aesthetic issues, although always important for Jarodzki, gradually began to recede into the background, when existential threads appeared in his works, while he was artistically working through his traumatic experiences and memories from World War II. For example, in Head II and Head III (1967), Jarodzki recalled a shocking reminiscence from 1939, when he saw a head of a dead soldier, crushed by the tracks of a tank. Andrzej Kostołowski sees in these works ‘an effort to bring out tragic tension’ and the visualisation of ‘the idea of breaking or crushing.’⁶⁶ Ibidem. ↩︎

In the drawing series, Heads Torn (1968–1971), basically only the title refers to the original figurative motif, where, in fact, we are presented with expressive abstract images which emanate with brutal force which led to destruction. The series Heads Torn was also developed by the artist in his painting techniques – in paintings, often monochromatic, the texture of ‘torn’ heads was applied with impasto to a smoother and slightly lighter grey background. Interesting variants of this motif can be found in the 1970s Pressure and Head. Under Fire, as well as The Fog painted in greys and the extremely expressive Head – Dark.

The stylistics of Heads and Portraits, with all their original distinctiveness and expressiveness, probably refers to some phenomena in the area of French matter painting, for example by Jean Dubuffet and Jean Fautrier. It does not invoke direct formal references, but a certain stylistic ambience of Jarodzki’s paintings. Fautrier, in particular, seemed to exert an important influence on the artist at that time due to the specific existentialism inherent in the Frenchman’s works, the constant presence of the head motif in his paintings and sculptures, who skilfully operated on the border between figuration and abstraction. We should also mention works of Pierre Soulages, whose broad painting gestures, also – possibly – were significant for the works of the Wrocław painter.

In the 1960s, Jarodzki worked through a number of artistic traditions in his paintings, from post-impressionism to matter painting and informel, so his works ascribe within the essential

tendencies characteristic of Polish art of that era. In the works of domestic artists of that time, a symptomatic process of redefining the phenomena of European art could be observed, as a result of which informel became more of an experience related to tackling painterly matter rather than an artistic gesture. Analysing these tendencies, Piotr Piotrowski writes:

Aesthetic values are more emphasised here, exactly as in the art of matter, rather than the philosophical ones, as in classical, especially French, painting of gesture […]. This aestheticisation of informel by the ‘materialisation’ of the painting canvas will turn out to be very symptomatic and historically significant. ⁷⁷ P. Piotrowski, Awangarda w cieniu Jałty. Sztuka w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej w latach 1945–1989, Poznań 2005, p. 84. ↩︎

The researcher from Poznań aptly points out that aestheticization was in fact a form of defence of culture, as the artists ‘experienced a systematic and deliberate degradation of culture conducted by the communist authorities in its politicisation and propaganda instrumentalisation.’⁸⁸ Ibidem, p. 85. ↩︎ This aestheticisation was a positive choice, indicating higher, more elitist, and refined values, and finally – it was a form of refusal to participate in the corruption of culture.

Among the most important intellectual world trends which shaped the culture of that time, apart from existentialism, also structuralism should be mentioned. For the creators belonging to the Wrocław School and Wrocław Group, it was undoubtedly an important point of reference, regardless of whether they created painting or drawing structures (as Alfons Mazurkiewicz or Józef Hałas) or were following the so-called conceptual art (as Jan Chwałczyk, Wanda Gołkowska, Jerzy Rosołowicz or Zdzisław Jurkiewicz). This also applies to the works of Jarodzki and is in accordance with Kostołowski’s opinion, who notices the artist’s ‘abstract and structural thinking’ as early as the 1960s in the series Heads and Portraits,⁹⁹ A. Kostołowski, op. cit., p. 5. ↩︎ although the author himself indicated the year 1970 as the moment when structures appeared in his painting.¹⁰¹⁰ See P. Lewandowski-Palle, Obrazy ujawniają się same, ‘Format. Artistic Journal’ vol. 70 (2014/2015), p. 24. ↩︎ Not without significance for these ‘subcutaneous’ configurations hidden in Jarodzki’s early paintings was the oeuvre of Mazurkiewicz, who already in 1958 announced his ‘duo-plasticism’ manifesto and in his paintings began to carry out multi-threaded, in-depth structural investigations.

¹¹¹¹ See A. Jarosz, op. cit., p. 26 n. Propinquity of Jarodzki’s painting to ‘rigorist, textual abstractions’ of Mazurkiewicz is also noticed by A. Rottenberg (Sztuka w Polsce 1945–2005, Warszawa 2005, p. 63). ↩︎ ‘Structural-abstract’ thinking is undoubtedly evident in the series of drawings Tissue and Bio-tissue from 1968–1971, which seem to be analyses of some organic matter viewed in the form of microscopic slides. The destruction of structures of this type can also be found in the series of drawings Necrotic Tissue from 1969 (for example, Necrotic Tissue I, Destruction VI and VIII, Solstice I).

Bio-tissue drawing series, Heads Torn and oil paintings from the series Heads from the late 1960s and early 1970s exhibit a number of formal convergences – displayed in abstract, often emotionally marked works, in which only the titles of the paintings evoke the distant context of figurativeness. This specific aspect of Jarodzki’s works was accurately characterised by Alicja Kępińska, who noticed that the artist from Wrocław was then primarily interested in the issue of painting, he ‘shapes the matter of paint in such a way that it removes its semantic function.’¹²¹² A. Kępińska, Nowa sztuka. Sztuka polska w latach 1945–1978, Warszawa 1981, p. 142. ↩︎

STRUCTURES AND SPACES –
A BREAKTHROUGH TIME

In the second half of the 1960s, Jarodzki, besides working as a designer in an architectural office, started also teaching at the art university. Initially, he was a geometry lecturer, and then, as a full-time employee, he became a drawing teacher. Educational activity, which involved daily contacts and conversations with other artists and students, played a large role in building his self-awareness. For when we look at the activities of Jarodzki in hindsight, it is hard to resist the impression that the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s were groundbreaking for his artistic biography. Although many symptoms had indicated impending changes before, only then did the natural evolution of the Wrocław painter’s art substantially accelerate. There were several major events that played a catalyst role in Jarodzki’s artistic transformations. The first of them was undoubtedly the visit to Vence in France in 1970, on a three-month scholarship from the Michael Karolyi Foundation ‘Le Vieux Mas’. The breathtaking and inspiring landscapes of the Maritime Alps, the extraordinary experience of space and the atmosphere of concentration were conducive to artistic re-evaluations. These experiences turned out to be so vital that years later the artist could still perfectly recollect the thoughts and feelings that accompanied him at that time. He also repeatedly emphasised the importance of that period:

I even felt as if I had some obligation to try something completely different. […] it was necessary to start with the technique, technique of painting. I needed to create a new technique. […] There [namely in Vence] structures appeared, it was not geometry, but oval structures, yet they were repetitive. It was where I determined the technique of my penetration of space in a painting image. Also over there my first structural painting and the subsequent ones were created.¹³¹³ K. Jarodzki in conversation with P. Lewandowski-Palle in: P. Lewandowski-Palle, op.cit., p. 24. ↩︎

Although drawing and painting structures had already appeared in the works of Jarodzki before, it was here – as the artist emphasised – that they became his conscious aim. This problem was tightly connected to the painter’s endeavour to tackle space – in 1970 paintings, such as Plates, Mass, Beginning or Rocks – angular or oval forms of hard matter in the foreground of the painting open up with relatively narrow clearances onto a mysterious space. The artist seems to apply here the rule of Roman architects to painting. According to this rule, narrow window openings make a view of the space opening behind them more remarkable and moving – as Cicero wrote in a letter to Atticus,¹⁴¹⁴ See P. Quignard, Seks i trwoga [Sex and terror], transl., introduction by K. Rutkowski, Warszawa 2002, p. 36. ↩︎ commenting on his conversation with the architect Cyrus. In the works from that time, we can also find a painterly reflection on more fleeting phenomena of nature, for example in the works of Nuage I, II and III (1970). The matter displayed on these canvases gives the impression of being soft, as if it did not concern a cloud, but a living organism which undergoes some mysterious processes and is subject to constant transformations. The aforementioned works initiate the multithreaded investigations of Jarodzki on painting structures and metamorphoses of space, which spread over numerous series of paintings.

The conceptual symposium ‘Wrocław ‘70’, which, according to many artists and researchers, became a significant threshold in Polish art of the second half of the 20th century, was another notable event for the artist. Piotrowski points out that the meeting in Wrocław was a turning point ‘between modernist art and – although clearly embedded in the modernist (constructivist and neo-constructivist) tradition – neo-avant-garde.’¹⁵¹⁵ P. Piotrowski, op. cit., pp. 129–130. ↩︎ There, Jarodzki presented three designs which, on the one hand, referred to his architectural practice, and on the other hand – profited from past painting and drawing experiences. Light Tower was designed as a reinforced concrete pillar with an openwork, austere structure – light was supposed to penetrate through vertical and transverse slits and grooves made of coloured glass. Leaning Tower, humorously referring to the famous Renaissance building in Pisa, was supposed to consist of a bundle of slanted, thick steel pipes with a diameter of 20 cm each. Whereas, the third work was a design of a concrete Head planned on a superhuman scale (8 metres high), in which the artist referred to his Heads Torn from paintings and drawings; in this work – as he planned – ‘the gentle fluidity of arches of the artistic element […] [was supposed to] oppose the rigorous vertical and horizontal arrangements of modern architecture.’¹⁶¹⁶ Sympozjum plastyczne Wrocław ’70, edited by D. Dziedzic, Z. Makarewicz, Wrocław 1983, p. 91. ↩︎ The forms proposed by Jarodzki fit perfectly into the symposium’s programme. These projects drew on the experiences of architectural brutalism and the art of minimal art, yet equally essential were the artist’s thoughts on structuralism. It seems that although the artist had never belonged to the circle of conceptualists or practised the so-called conceptual art in its pure form, he was, however, leaning towards a belief, integrally inscribed in these trends, that art is also (and sometimes – above all) an intellectual activity.

Another aesthetic experience, which played a significant role in shaping the creative attitude and in defining the mature painting language of the artist, was the open-air ‘Zgorzelec Land’ in 1971. During that meeting, the participating artists, while visiting one of the so-called great construction sites of socialism, were confronted mainly with the destructive dimension of human activities, with the devastation of the natural environment, and the annihilation and irreversible transformation of space. Barbara Baworowska, analysing the work of Jarodzki in the mid-1970s, saw the period from 1963 to 1970 as a phase of ‘crystallisation of the artist’s individual style’ and she believed that ‘the final synthesis of the artistic programme took place in 1971, at an open-air in Turów.’¹⁷¹⁷ B. Baworowska, Konrad Jarodzki, ’Fine Art’ 1975, No. 2, p. 54; reprint in: Konrad Jarodzki…, p. 85. ↩︎ Jan Chwałczyk was the organiser and instigator of the meeting in Zgorzelec, and he found the conceptual context of the project important. On the other hand, Jarodzki was primarily concerned with the special experience in relation to space, which for him became an attempt at perceptual comprehension and application of the human scale to a phenomenon which definitely went beyond the anthropological perspective of perceiving reality. The work created by the artist at that time was entitled Record of Space and was an in situ activity in the scenery of an opencast mine. While roaming the area, the artist wanted to physically confront himself with the striking, ‘hollow’ landscape and mark some of its fragments with white sackcloth tape. As a result of this action, the lunar panorama of the great outcropping revealed its space-time character. This specific measuring of space – as if helpless and a bit childlike, and at the same time radical and penetrating – became an attempt at understanding and marking it with his own presence, it turned into a visualisation of the paths along which the artist traversed the vast area. The action, recorded photographically by Natalia Lach-Lachowicz, was perceived as a contemporary variant of the ancient Theseus myth, wandering through a strange labyrinth and unwinding a spool of thread, so that he would not get lost in its expanse.¹⁸¹⁸ See ibidem. ↩︎ It was also described as a realisation on the borderline of land art and artistic intervention into an existing spatial situation,¹⁹¹⁹ See J. Madeyski, Sztuka Jarodzkiego, ’Literary Life’ 1972, No. 26, p. 3; reprint in: Konrad Jarodzki…, p. 37. ↩︎ but most of all it was perceived as a story about destruction and annihilation of a certain fragment of the world.²⁰²⁰ See A. Kostołowski, op. cit., p. 6. ↩︎

Balancing between delight and terror – this is how the artist’s emotions related to the experience of space in Vence and Turów can be described. In both cases, we are confronted with phenomena and forms that go beyond the human scale and affect a man with their monumental proportions. Vence was all about an extraordinary, delightful spectacle of nature, which allowed him to admire the enormity of the Alps coming out to meet the vastness of the sea. In this spectacle, the proximity of two elements, two orders, takes on a truly Pythagorean, cosmic character (after all, the Pythagorean term ‘cosmos’ meant ‘neatness, order’). In Turów, on the other hand, he was predominantly overwhelmed with the staggering, monumental destruction, the spatial emptiness transformed into a modern form of a labyrinth, in which, without the solid Ariadne’s thread in the form of sackcloth tape, you can be lost forever, as all points of reference adjusted to human scale had been removed from it.

In the years to come, Jarodzki will continually move between delight and terror in his artistic explorations concerning space. The breakthrough which appeared in the work of the Wrocław artist resulted from the gradual, very consistent search for his own, unique and – at the same time – recognisable artistic language. As early as in the 1960s, Jarodzki was already a mature man and a conscious, accomplished creator (both in the field of architecture and in the field of fine arts), and he certainly did not succumb to various stylistic, aesthetic and intellectual trends, so characteristic of the art and culture of that period. He remained, however, an extremely vigilant observer and an active participant in creative debates and polemics. The artistic re-evaluations that emerged in his works at that point stemmed from the accumulation of experiences and reflections, but they were also the result of the fact that Jarodzki had to face – for various reasons – some basic questions concerning his identity.

METAMORPHOSES
OF SPACE

The motif of a head, so important for Jarodzki’s work in the 1960s, still appeared in his works in the following decade (Heads Torn from 1971 or the Homo series from 1976). However, the most important issue which perplexed the artist at that time seems to be the painterly idea of space or, to be more precise, a painting game with the illusion of spatiality. Space as an artistic matter, as a material, was a problem which had characterised the creative endeavours of Jarodzki from the very beginning. We must not forget that he was also an architect, and thinking about architecture or urban planning and design, for obvious reasons, is a form of a spatial game.

Baworowska tends to see the beginning of the author’s artistic struggles with space in the series of drawings Necrotic Tissue from 1969 (for example works titled Destruction), while Hermansdorfer claimed that in 1971 Jarodzki ‘suddenly changed his style of operation. It was when he rejected the basic principle of his concepts – the contrast between matter and space.’²¹²¹ M. Hermansdorfer, Konrad Jarodzki…, p. 12. ↩︎ The scholar also notices that both, in drawings and in paintings, a greater spatiality of the composition appeared, and material forms, which acquired an organic character, began to merge with space.²²²² Ibidem. ↩︎ Kostołowski draws attention to the series Space, which started with the inspiring landscapes of the Maritime Alps. In this series, the new main subject matter became visible, ‘a conceptual game with the illusion of spatiality and the dynamics of shape changes.’ The critic also notes that at that time the artist defined his own individual formula for creating a painting, which can be called the ‘Jarodzki’s method’. This method was developed ‘independently and experimentally’ and was reflected both in the painting technique and in his aesthetic and stylistic choices. Viewers were confronted with images in which the artist resigned from the intense range of colours and chose almost monochromatic tones, often using only greys, blacks, and whites. Kostołowski emphasised that an extremely important role was played by the choice of ‘paints which constituted the »deep« layer […] and those applied to it as an outer layer.’ And finally, for the ‘Jarodzki’s method,’ the key was the fact that ‘the entire composition […] is to be the result of working with a putty or brush on wet material’; ‘Each arrangement of forms depends as much on the concept or mood as it does on the ability to work with paint.’²³²³ A. Kostołowski, op. cit., pp. 5–6. ↩︎ Therefore, technological conditions determine the creator’s pace and rhythm of activities. A painting must be created from the beginning to the end during one painting session, an artist should work quickly and confidently because nothing can be postponed, and when the paint dries up, nothing can be changed or improved.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Jarodzki became one of the most recognisable and expressive Polish painters. On the one hand, it stemmed from the specific stylistic and aesthetic character of his canvases, on the other hand – from the subject matter and ambience (emotional and intellectual) of his paintings suggested by the titles. At that time, many interpretations of these works appeared, where critics expressed their ingenuity by making attempts, breakneck at times, to name the forms which appeared in Jarodzki’s works. It was also a testimony to how strongly these forms stimulated the imagination of viewers, and at the same time, they showed how difficult it was to translate these imaginary constructs into linguistic formulas. In such situations, the chasm between grammatical and logical discourses and the painterly language of matter and pigments becomes painfully evident.²⁴²⁴ See G. Steiner, Rzeczywiste obecności, transl. by. O. Kubińska, Gdańsk 1997, p. 18. ↩︎ Efforts to identify and find a name for the creations appearing in these abstract paintings tell more about the specifics of the critic’s imagination (most often about its shortcomings) rather than about the works themselves.

An interesting method of analysing Jarodzki’s paintings is proposed by Kostołowski, who – guided by the philosophical concepts of Roman Ingarden – points at two interpretative planes, distinguishing ‘painting’ and ‘picture’. We must take both of these planes into account when attempting to analyse the works of the Wrocław artist, as they coexist in our interpretation strategies. These are the planes: ‘real-structural (picture) and illusory-associative (painting).’²⁵²⁵ A. Kostołowski, op. cit., p. 5. ↩︎ This distinction is close to the method proposed by Hans Belting, who was trying to prove that in our thinking about paintings there must always be a distinction between media images, materialised in one of the existing media images, and mental images, for which a person, his/her memory and imagination, becomes a specific, live media carrier.²⁶²⁶ H. Belting, Antropologia obrazu. Szkice do nauki o obrazie, transl. by M. Bryl, Kraków 2007. ↩︎

When applying his painting method of working in wet material, in the following decades, Jarodzki moved around the vast territories, which he was gradually discovering. He himself precisely analysed these issues in the text titled ‘Space as material’²⁷²⁷ K. Jarodzki, Przestrzeń jako tworzywo, Wrocław 1999, teaching materials of the Wrocław Academy of Art and Design, No. 1; reprint in: Konrad Jarodzki…, pp. 90–93. ↩︎, probably being aware that even the most prolific artist can explore only a small fragment of this space. In the case of the artist from Wrocław, the creation was equally related to the free, unrestricted imaginary game, detached from the limitations of matter, as much as to the imagination, which was definitely corporeal and material, as it was released during the artist’s immersion in the specificity of manual rhythms of work. It can be said that it is the painter’s hand which weaves its visual stories, and the painting becomes a record of a certain performative act.

The Space series, around which a series of successive, as if digressive, works were created, is the largest and the most extensive painting undertaking of Jarodzki. In the artist’s early works belonging to this series, the joy and curiosity of the discoverer is palpable – for example, in the works Space III (1971) or Space IV (1972), the forms which originate in the foreground seem to retreat into endless territories in the background of the painting. In the work Witness (1972), we are presented with an organic structure which appears to be looking for a way to take root in a whitened blue. Yet in another variant of this motif (Witness from 1972, currently in the District Museum in Bydgoszcz), the artist plays, with remarkable finesse, a subtle spatial game between warm, whitened browns and cool greys with light hints of blue – a game in which the contrast between warm and cold colours takes on a surprising, non-obvious form. Such a broad, visual breath appears in many paintings, for example in Space VII (1971) or Space XXV (1972), which present a blue spatial puzzle as if a kind of a fragment of an organic Moebius strip. Similar explorations can also be found in the paintings Space XXXVIII (1974) and In the Distance (1985). Sometimes they take a dramatic form, as in Inferno (1975), in which the red of elongated, oval forms grows threateningly and annexes the neutral grey. Sometimes they turn out to be a painter’s joke – for example, when cool celadon invites and guides the viewer into the depths of Optimistic Space (1978).

In his drawings from the 1970s, the artist also asks questions about space and structures – this can be seen in the series Dependence (1971-1976), where the artist translates purely painterly issues into a drawing and observes how the interweaving and collision of forms and the game with the illusion of space can function in the world of images defined by a line. Similar topics can be found in the drawings of Structures (1970), and the undoubtedly structural nature of artistic investigations is also revealed in the drawings of Fallow Land I and II (1974) as well as Tissue and Bio-tissue from 1971.

A different atmosphere prevails in the series Penetrations, which is also a form of exploring space, but there is something claustrophobic about these paintings. Such an impression is created in, for example, Pressure II (1974), completely filled with the serpentine coils of a mysterious creature. In this cycle, the entire plane of the canvases seems to be annexed by strange entities, so that viewers have an impression of immersing themselves in the inner space of some organism or they become involuntary witnesses of a struggle between two enormous corporal beings. Such a ‘tight’ perspective means that many of these images may suggest certain erotic undertones, for example, the extremely sensual, painted in pinks and reds, Penetration VI (1972). On other occasions, it is not love struggle which will come to mind, but rather aggression and fight, for example in the works Penetration I (1975), Penetration III (XII) (1976) or Penetration IV (1972). Hermansdorfer remarked that at the end of the 1970s, Jarodzki’s paintings achieved artistic perfection, and due to the enrichment and intensification of colours, the paintings became more sensual. The scholar described them:

The artist’s art then reaches its perfection. The lines in his paintings meander in gentle weaves, the colour tones are saturated, light and shadows are balanced. The works are calm, joyful – the kind which are painted by artists who, after years of searching, achieve inner harmony.²⁸²⁸ M. Hermansdorfer, Artyści Wrocławia 1945–1970, Wrocław 1996, p. 75. ↩︎

Such a harmonious and optimistic atmosphere, however, emanates only from some of the artist’s paintings – many canvases carry disturbing messages, probably referring to various existential threats present in the contemporary world.

Elements occurring in individual canvases appear on a larger scale in Jarodzki’s diptychs and triptychs. The artist started painting them in the 1970s, but in the following decades, he repeatedly resorted to a painting formula which allowed him to develop and explore nuances in his visual narrative.²⁹²⁹ A. Kostołowski (op. cit., p. 6) calls Jarodzki’s diptychs and triptychs ‘visual essays’. ↩︎ The triptych Here it comes from 1976, to which the artist returned multiple times in later years (for example in 2007), is described by Kostołowski as a prophetic masterpiece.³⁰³⁰ Ibidem. ↩︎ This work does have something Cassandra-like about it, a warning, an alarming scream. The canvas presents tangles of a dark, coiled, navy blue structure, reminiscent of an approaching storm front or some other unstoppable cataclysm. It seems that at that time the artist – probably intuitively – referred in his works to the sources of imaging, to solutions which appeared in archaic works of Palaeolithic painting. That work – as Pascal Quignard so acutely noticed – ‘is characterised by a momentary narrative. What is shown on the walls of a dark cave threatens in the same way as a storm in a darkened sky.’³¹³¹ P. Quignard, Noc seksualna, transl. by K. Rutkowski, Gdańsk 2008, p. 92. ↩︎ A similar atmosphere can be found in the works of the Wrocław artist completed in the 1970s.

In polyptychs, the forms expand, and they become more monumental – a viewer gains a kind of panoramic insight into a fantastic, often very disturbing reality. Those visual essays by Jarodzki are capable of drawing a viewer into nostalgic, warm greys, for example in the diptych Space Curved (1974). They can also tell stories about the human experience of time and space, as in the triptych Threat / Return (2003–2004), or become an ascetic narrative about light and darkness which we encounter in the triptych Fall / Kinetics (2003–2004).³²³² Exhibition catalogue Konrad Jarodzki… (p. 47) work titled Triptych – kinetics ABC dated 2004. ↩︎

Viewers, confronted with Jarodzki’s paintings, find themselves in a special situation, as they encounter abstract works which constantly imply various figurative associations and interpretative temptations. This is where the space-time of painting meets the space-time of viewers’ imaginations. It should be agreed that Baworowska was right stating:

The complicated spatial-temporal systems contained in the paintings interact with a force equal to that which usually occurs in environments. Elements of reality and possibilities permeate each other, places which were seen and potential places, inspire the viewer to activity.³³³³ B. Baworowska, op. cit., p. 54; Konrad Jarodzki…, p. 85. ↩︎

In the artist’s statement from the 1970s concerning the reception and impact of these images, a conviction can be noticed that the perception of his works is ‘a sensual rather than intellectual reception of a certain unit of the structural unity of the world, where space turns into matter and material forms merge with space.’³⁴³⁴ Quoted from S. Hulanicki, Gdzieś poza ziemię, [in:] Konrad Jarodzki…, p. 25. ↩︎ Jarodzki mentioned that in these works everything revolves around such phenomena as space, movement and light. However, it was not relating to a literal painting translation of real phenomena, because ‘these three concepts have been presented as ideas. Space is illusory, movement is hardly perceptible, and the light is painted on.’³⁵³⁵ Ibidem. ↩︎ These canvases are inscribed with universal threats and fears – from the predatory exploitation of the planet’s resources and the devastation of the natural environment to the threat of a global nuclear conflict, from the exciting achievements of science, technology and medicine to the dark side of research experiments. The artist repeatedly recalled the anxiety which accompanied him while working on his paintings. It did not refer to individual, singular existential fears, but rather to universal, even super-specific threats.

It is worth drawing attention to the peculiar monumentalism of Jarodzki’s works, which appears in the 1970s and which is not necessarily related to the physical size of the paintings. The artist usually adhered to medium sizes: 80 cm × 100 cm or 100 cm × 130 cm, with the latter growing in diptychs or triptychs to really large scales – 100 cm × 260 cm and 100 cm × 390 cm, but even here it is difficult to regard these sizes as monumental. It is rather related to the impression of a viewer, a perceptual sensation suggesting that we are only looking through the window of the picture at the infinite space in which extraordinary forms, difficult to identify and name, swirl and cluster. In this context, as Jerzy Madeyski describes it, a viewer is seemingly transported ‘deep into the bowels of the cosmic Leviathan.’³⁶³⁶ J. Madeyski, op. cit., p. 37. ↩︎ This monumentalism is a kind of hypnotic experience, the mental state of an observer, who, in a sense, is being sucked into the canvases.

BROADENING
THE PLAYING FIELD

In the 1970s, Jarodzki became permanently associated with the PWSSP [the State Higher School of Fine Arts] in Wrocław – initially (1971–1972) he held the post of a lecturer in artistic drawing, and then, after a one-year break, he became a senior lecturer in the painting and drawing studio managed by Mazurkiewicz. At that time, his academic career gained momentum. Already in June 1976, after the degree procedures, he was appointed to the position of an associate professor at the Wrocław university, and in the autumn of that year, after the sudden death of his friend and former boss, Jarodzki became the head of the studio the late professor had left behind. Mazurkiewicz was an outstanding creator, charismatic artist, and educator, which meant that taking over his studio was associated with great responsibility and was certainly an enormous challenge. Mazurkiewicz was carrying out the so-called open programme – an innovative model of education, which in many respects referred to the creative ideas and concepts of Joseph Beuys; it was open to various experiments, discussions, and creative ferment.³⁷³⁷ See A. Jarosz, op. cit., pp. 113–116. ↩︎ Jarodzki continued those traditions and the studio under his leadership still attracted many mutinous, rebellious artistic personalities, especially students who were not willing to accept the Polish reality of that time. It was no coincidence that the famous Luxus group from Wrocław was established and started its activity here, and that Jarodzki’s studio was a place where Lech Janerka and the musicians of Klaus Mitffoch band found a friendly asylum.

At that time, the artist successfully combined his intensive creative work with a number of other professional activities, such as, for example, acting as the President of the Wrocław District of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers [ZPAP] in the years 1975–1978. Intensive efforts and activities related to the Panorama of the Battle of Racławice became an important undertaking with a nationwide resonance. Jarodzki was one of the initiators of the establishment of the Social Committee of the Panorama of the Battle of Racławice. Later, after the formation of this body in 1980, he became the secretary of the presidium and joined the painting conservation team. After many perturbations, the canvas finally found its way to Wrocław, to a specially designed building. On 13^th November 1980, Jarodzki was one of those who personally collected in Warszawa the rolled-up canvas of the huge painting.

In 1981, the artist became the dean of the Faculty of Painting, Graphics and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, and he held this position until 1984, when he was elected as a rector of the university. However, he did not take this position at that time, as the minister of culture and art vetoed the decision of the university electoral commission. For the authorities of that time, Jarodzki was definitely an uncomfortable candidate – too independent and not flexible enough. What also mattered was the fact that when the communist authorities imposed martial law in Poland, the painter was interned and imprisoned in Nysa.

The 1980s were a difficult time, also for culture and art. Nevertheless, artists did not abandon their various creative activities, and for many of them, art turned out to be the only area within which they could find shelter from oppressive and depressing reality. Art was sometimes a refuge, sometimes a form of escape – escapist moods became quite common in Poland at that time. It was accompanied by the boycott of official party media and exhibition spaces – artists very often tried to find other alternatives and chose less obvious locations for expositions, often not really convenient ones, but it allowed them to avoid the interference of censorship. Such decisions were treated as unequivocal ideological and political declarations. Among the significant initiatives which should be considered in this context, were two important national exhibition projects which occurred in Wrocław – large collective exhibitions ‘The Road and the Truth’ organised in the church of the Holy Cross. Those exhibitions were contrived as the National Biennale of Young Artists, where Jarodzki was the commissioner of both editions (1985 and 1987) and the organiser of the accompanying symposiums.³⁸³⁸ On behalf of the Church organisational activities were coordinated by priest Mirosław Drzewiecki. ↩︎ The hospitable space of a two-story church on Wrocław’s Ostrów Tumski, welcomed the arranged presentations, which became a manifestation of artistic freedom and independence.

In the second half of the 1980s, Jarodzki returned to his architectural activity and successfully continued it in the 1990s,³⁹³⁹ Initially, the artist collaborated with the Warsaw Miastoprojekt [CityDesign], and then with the Wrocław company Archicom. ↩︎ when he collaborated on projects which won commendations on multiple occasions; for some of them, he received, among others, two first-degree ministerial awards: in 1995 for the design and its realisation of the Wrocław branch of Handlowy Bank and in 1999 for the design of the Art Hotel complex in Wrocław.

At that time, the artist was often pulled away from creative activities, nonetheless – regardless of various external circumstances and hindrances – he continued to work on the most important series of paintings, where he undertook a game with mysteries and illusions of space using a variety of painterly means. Concurrently, new threads and topics began to appear in his works, especially the painting series Erotica seems to be particularly interesting. It was where the author scrutinised his past subject matters applying to them slightly different, a more intimate perspective, specifically fine-tuning their stylistic and aesthetic ambience. In the 1980s, Jarodzki’s painting, in the course of natural artistic evolution, gradually became more and more synthesising and focused. Important works from those years include Tangent bis (1981), Space neo VIII (1983) and Galaxie (1981), which was an early harbinger of the Cosmos series, which was expanded in the following decades. The earlier mentioned series Erotica annexes and develops certain threads which had been taken up before in the paintings Burden (I – V) from 1977; for example, in Burden II the artist used greys, subtle blues and white glazes; Burden IV is painted in intense, warm reds on a pink and salmon background; while Burden III, like a threatening storm in the sky, shimmers with greys, navy blues and azure blues. Those paintings depict forms which resemble swollen breasts or can be associated with cocoons, with reproduction by budding, with the fertile force of nature. Erotica paintings also seem to be a natural logical and emotional continuation of Penetration, but this time gaining much more sensuality and intensity, and affecting the viewer both through formal means and through a subtle play of colours. While analysing Erotica paintings, it was emphasised that they brought a new tone to the previous painting reflections on space, which was combined with fresh colour solutions, for example, with the introduction of intense reds, navy blues, oranges and yellows.⁴⁰⁴⁰ See J. Jaroszewski, Konrad Jarodzki – artysty portret domniemany, ‘Format. Artistic Journal’ 1992, No. 3/4, p. 25. ↩︎ It brings to mind an impression that these canvases conceal inside sophisticated erotic games, during which the passion and temperature of love encounters keep rising. The ubiquitous reds seem to gradually take over all the spatial nooks and crannies in Erotica I and Erotica VII from 1983. Sometimes, however, the viewer can be under the impression that the game occurs at a different stage – it is still cool, barely awakened or maybe it has already cooled down a bit, as in Erotica III and Erotica IV (1983). The series also reveals the artist’s subtle, reserved sense of humour – the title and the corporal, biological painting forms visible in these works suggest inevitable erotic associations with images which are simply colourful abstractions organic in nature.

In 1994-1995, Jarodzki painted the Tear diptych, which can be treated as a specific commentary on the changes in Central and Eastern Europe of that time, because the work is a painterly tale about the struggle between light and darkness. The mood of concentration with a hint of nostalgia already permeates the Linea-bio series, which was started in 1976, but it was developed with greater intensity in the following decades. In the 1980s, this series included compositions akin to the Erotica paintings, however, those paintings are almost monochromatic, mostly kept in greys and subtle, as if bashful pinks. After 1990, the artist simplified the form even further, he began to use diagonal compositions and built his light-in-tone paintings on the thin, dark arteries of impasto lines. The Linea-bio series also includes an excellent diptych, painted in 1995, titled To Mazurkiewicz. This ascetic masterpiece with a restrained, diagonal composition, in which everything is played out with great mastery in greys, blacks and whites, evokes the figure of an outstanding Wrocław artist but is above all a universal painterly tale about memory, continuance and fading of memories.

The last decade of the 20th century was for Jarodzki a time of intense work and arduous academic activity. In 1990, he was appointed an associate professor at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Wrocław, and shortly after that, in 1991, he obtained the title of full professor. In 1993 – in a completely different political reality – Jarodzki was re-elected as the rector of the PWSSP in Wrocław, this time without any objections from the ministry. He held this position for two terms (until 1999) and these years were extremely important for the Wrocław university. It can be said that they were extremely significant in terms of identity. Certainly, there were many different factors at play at that time, including cultural, political, economic and social changes which determined life in Poland in the 1990s. However, they constituted only a certain background, a wider context, while the evolution of the university identity should be considered the work of specific people, including the rector in charge.

Jarodzki’s first term in office started with great success – in the autumn of 1993, after many years of effort, the university took over the neighbouring buildings from the city, located in the quarter enclosed by Frycz-Modrzewski, Purkyně and Garncarska Streets. Later it bore fruit in the first important expansion of the school and a fundamental improvement in its infrastructure and academic premises, enlarged by new spaces, which included, among others, numerous studios, a library and lecture halls.

On 17^th September 1998, an unprecedented event in the history of the Wrocław art school took place. In the university’s Leopoldine Hall, an honorary doctorate honoris causa of the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław was awarded to Balthazar Klossowski de Rola – Balthus, one of the most famous, and at the same time most separate and mysterious European painters of the 20th century. The fact that an artist of such a rank as Balthus agreed to accept this distinction was a huge personal success of Jarodzki as he, as the then rector, was the promoter of this honorary doctorate. The title for Balthus also sealed the identity transformation of the Wrocław art school, which just two years earlier, in 1996, changed its status, transforming from the PWSSP to the Academy of Fine Arts. When delivering the laudation, Jarodzki referred primarily to the art and artistic attitude of the then 90-year-old Balthus, to his connections with Poland and Wrocław. However, when we read deeper into the words of the then rector, in this laudation we will also discover the artistic credo, applicable not only to Balthus. Jarodzki talked about form through which one can express and visualise ‘the inner life of a human being and everything that surrounds him’, about distancing himself from ’fashionable trends and tendencies’ in order to create ‘his own unique vision of the world, a deeply humanistic one.’⁴¹⁴¹ W. Kaniowski, K. Jarodzki, J. Jedliński, Balthus. Balthazar Klossowski de Rola Balthus. 17 września 1998 roku, doktorat honoris causa Akademii Sztuk Pięknych we Wrocławiu, edited by A. Saj, Wrocław 1998, p. 4. ↩︎ He mentioned broadening areas of human sensitivity and a dialogical approach to historical artistic traditions. Those statements, while summarising exactly Balthus’s attitude and artistic achievements, were also a summary and a concise description of the creative (and life) attitude of Jarodzki himself, something resembling a moving and self-aware apologia pro domo sua. The rector recalled artistic traditions he felt an affinity for and, in retrospect, examined his creative path, and the decisions he made at various moments in his life.

Several variants of Self-Portrait became a symbolic painting closure of Jarodzki’s second term. The artist was probably prompted to paint them by the necessity to place his own image in the Senate room of the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, as it is in the custom of leaving rectors. In one of these works, painted in warm browns, delicate blues and whites, the face seems to undergo a process of blurring and fading away. The motif of the self-portrait appeared in the painter’s work as early as 1988 – Self-Portrait IV created at that time belongs stylistically to the Linea-bio series. It actually represents an abstract painting in which the artist’s profile is just beginning to emerge and take form.

BETWEEN LIGHT AND DARKNESS – 

YEARS OF A PROPHECY FULFILLED

When asked about the subjects appearing in his paintings, Konrad Jarodzki repeatedly emphasised the importance of external stimuli being the starting point for his creative work. It is not about a mimetic, illustrative approach to these subjects – he was an abstractionist almost from the beginning of his mature creativity, although his works sometimes fit into the broad borderline between abstraction and figuration. For the artist, those stimuli could have been memories and stories characterised by strong emotions, or sometimes contemporary current events became catalysts for a series of paintings or for individual works. In one of the interviews a few years ago, Jarodzki said:

For me, the impulse is everything that moves me, that shatters me. It starts with a realistic or literary subject, and then, in the course of painting, technique and formal quests supersede and the image becomes almost abstract. However, the core of this issue, which interested me, remains tangible in the painting. In the process of creation, the painting rules the painter, it is the commanding factor.⁴²⁴² K. Jarodzki, Maluję, więc jestem, conversation with B. Lekarczyk-Cisek, on 27 XII 2017, http://www.kulturalneingrediencje.blogspot.com/2017/12/konrad-jarodzki-maluje-wiec-jestem.html (access: 29.08.2021). ↩︎

An event which profoundly shocked the artist was the terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center on 11^th September 2001, even though the artist was not immediately ready to confront this topic in his paintings. He needed time to distance himself from those dramatic events in order to discover the most suitable painting form. What is clearly visible in the immense series WTC, are the references to media, photographic and film images, which at the time imprinted on the collective imagination in the most emphatic way, but – as the artist himself emphasised – his paintings are far from being illustrative. It was not concerned with photographic faithfulness but with the creation of works which became ‘a kind of a metaphor and symbol. They express the clash between the harmony of the existing reality and destruction caused by fanaticism and hatred.’⁴³⁴³ Ibidem. ↩︎ The titles of individual works belonging to the WTC series refer to certain stories from television or the internet reports (such as Cutting, Destruction, Shimmering, In Between, Disturbance, Pyroclastic Ebb, and Strike), but the order of geometrical architectural structures in those works is particularly shaken. It is a kind of painterly ‘blur’ in which black and white forms, sometimes slashed with a sharp blade of red, begin to live their own lives. The painting method used there resembles solutions which – despite all the differences in the painterly temperaments of the authors – can be found in the series of paintings 18^th October 1977 (Baader – Meinhof) by Gerhard Richter. Jarodzki said: ‘The paintings […] show my attitude towards the world, to what is happening in it. I am not interested in a pure form, but rather in one that results from some experience.’⁴⁴⁴⁴ Ibidem. ↩︎ The WTC series, which was growing since 2004 so that it eventually comprised over 20 works, is an excellent confirmation of these words.

Similar trembling and blurring of forms are visible in the paintings belonging to the series Alphabet (2003–2004) and Birds (2010–2011). These paintings are related to the WTC series not only formally, but they were also created at the same time and concern the atmosphere of threat and uncertainty which prevailed in the world of Western civilisation at that period. Alphabet is also a story about the fact that the simplest and most basic codes of culture and forms of communication are being destroyed today. While Birds (soaring, departing, fighting) seem to belong to the nature with which we have lost contact, which we do not understand and with which we cannot identify even though we are a part of it.

In many paintings created after the year 2000, the painter used a technique similar to the one he developed in the 1970s. Yet, it seems that now the coating of paint has a slightly different layer depth, it is thinner, as if smoother and flatter. This change is visible not only in the new series of works – it is also revealed when the artist returns to the works from the previous periods, painting their new variations.

After the year 2000, the time came to slowly end the intensive organisational and managerial activities at the university, so Jarodzki could immerse himself in creative work. On the one hand, he began to develop some threads which appeared in his works in previous decades – he painted, for example, subsequent variants of paintings from the Space series (such as Diagonal Space bis and Space Single from 2007, Terror from 2016, Return from 2019). Actually, it was only after the year 2000 when the Galaxie – Cosmos series, which initially started at the beginning of the 1980s, expanded. It was also concerned with visual and mental exploration of space, but on a macro scale, since it related to the entire universe. The space of individual works is marked with a diagonal, impasto fold, which introduces anxiety into these ascetic, monochromatic compositions. As if the cosmic order was determined by cosmic catastrophes, for example, collisions of galaxies or star clusters, the diagonal fold became a harbinger of the upcoming, inevitable subsequent deconstruction of harmony of the universe. The enigmatic paintings Cosmos from 2000 or Cosmos bis from 2005 are good examples, dotted with the constellations which participate in those struggles. This series was, not so long ago, enriched by the beautiful Cosmos VI (2018), kept in shades of blue. A similar ‘cosmic’ perspective on the macro scale also appeared in the series Etudes (earlier title: Energo) – it is especially worth drawing attention to the paintings of Magnetars I-VI and Contact from 2015 – whereas the micro scale appears, for example, in the work Quark from 2015.

In the K2 triptych (2003) and in the series Light, which was being painted by Jarodzki since 2001, light became a subject matter: it seems to materialise in his works. It is a painterly tale about a physical phenomenon and about transcendence, about shining as a symbolic being. Rays of light break through the dark curtains and reveal the ambivalence associated with light – here it is, beneficial and threatening at the same time, as it had been portrayed in various mythical or religious narratives.

It is noteworthy that after the year 2000, Jarodzki had far more exhibitions than in the last decades of the twentieth century. First of all, it is necessary to recall the 2008 exhibition ‘Here it comes’ at the National Museum in Wrocław, which was accompanied by a monumental catalogue (also in terms of format) designed by the artist himself. The exhibition was presented in the manner of an extensive retrospective, displaying a number of the most important historical series of Jarodzki’s oeuvre. Yet, these retrospective renditions of the exhibition received an interesting, up-to-date, interpretation by the author and were supplemented by new works, such as triptych Save bis (2006) or triptych Threat / Return (2003–2004), where the artist continued to examine the key issue of space. The list of exhibition projects should be expanded to include the 2013 exhibition in New York, in Manhattan,⁴⁵⁴⁵ The exhibition of Jarodzki’s Works ‘Distorted Clarity’, Chashama 210 Art Space, New York, 19 IX – 3 X 2013. ↩︎ and presentations organised in Wrocław and Warszawa by mia ART GALLERY in 2016 and 2019. In many respects, the last two decades of Jarodzki’s life were not only a time of summarising and recapitulating his artistic achievements to date, but also a period of intensive creative activity. The artist was continually open to new impulses, reacting with his painting to reality, diagnosing its light and dark sides.

CONCLUSION

In the 2015 documentary by Łukasz Śródka, In Absolute Silence, Jarodzki once again, after many years, traverses the apocalyptic space of the mine in Turów. This scenery is a proper context for the artist’s statements about anxiety, which constantly pushed him to further work. This anxiety always made Jarodzki a through-and-through contemporary artist, after all a man is contemporary, a man who – as Giorgio Agamben writes – ‘perceives the darkness of his epoch as something that concerns him and constantly speaks to him’; he is also someone who knows how to create by ‘dipping his pen in the darkness of the present.’⁴⁶⁴⁶ G. Agamben, Nagość, transl. by K. Żaboklicki, Warszawa 2010, pp. 19–20. ↩︎ The aesthetic mastery of Jarodzki’s works and their technical perfection may compel our attention and cause that the existential source, the dark core of these images might be overlooked. These abstract compositions, and organic structures appearing on his canvases and drawings, conceal a variety of intense emotions and experiences.

Art is a form of applying order to the chaos of sensations, fears and delights. According to the classic, Renaissance metaphor, the works of Konrad Jarodzki are windows which open onto a specific space (real or imaginary). Each of his paintings can be seen as a fragment of the cosmos. Then, the act of creation becomes an exploration, which opens up new perspectives and heads towards the horizon that keeps escaping us – because the escape of galaxies is something natural in our expanding universe.

Konrad Jarodzki died at the end of November 2021. His work, like the oeuvre of every outstanding artist, presents us with important identity questions and reminds us that in all our life endeavours we are simultaneously an archer, an arrow and a target.⁴⁷⁴⁷ See O. Paz, Portret Jorge Luisa Borgesa. Łucznik, strzała i cel, transl. G. Sławińska, ‘Literature in the wolrd’ 1988, No. 12, p. 12. ↩︎

Translated by: Sylwia Helim

SOURCE:

Text originally published in: Marek Snieciński, Konrad Jarodzki, from the series “Wrocławskie Środowisko Artystyczne” [Artistic Millieu of Wrocław]. Wrocław: Akademia Sztuk Pięknych im. Eugeniusza Gepperta we Wrocławiu, 2022.

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