Jerzy Nowosielski - the Hero of 2023

The Polish Parliament has declared 2023 the year of Jerzy Nowosielski! January 7 was the 100th anniversary of the painter's birthday. This is a great opportunity to familiarize you with the life of this extraordinary creator. In addition, you can bid on the author's work on paper during the "Post-War and Contemporary Art. Works on Paper." auction on the 9th of February. 

Jerzy Nowosielski was a painter, set designer, and draftsman, as well as one of the most outstanding contemporary icon artists. His art constitutes a unique phenomenon that combines sacrum and profanum, and fuses Orthodox theology with secular reality.

The artist was born in Krakow in 1923. As a teenager, he was influenced by the Catholic Church on the one hand and Orthodox Christianity on the other. His art was influenced by two important events: his pilgrimage to the Pochaiv Monastery in Volhynia and his visit to the Ukrainian Museum in Lviv, which had an extensive collection of icons. Along with 20th-century European art, these three fascinating aspects had an impact on the artist's later work.

Nowosielski began his studies at the Faculty of Decorative Painting in Krakow in 1940. Two years later, he asked the head of the John the Baptist Monastery to accept him into the community. The artist did not stay there for a long time due to his illness. During his stay, however, he became familiar with icons and iconography and dealt with them. Following the Lviv experience, he returned to Krakow in 1943. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, he joined the milieu of Tadeusz Kantor. In 1946, he took part in a collective exhibition of the Young Artists Group in the Krakow Palace of Art, preceded by the publication of the "intensified realism" manifesto by Tadeusz Kantor and Mieczysław Porębski.

At the same time, he was engaged in pedagogical work, becoming the assistant of Tadeusz Kantor at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Krakow in 1947. From 1957, the artist taught at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Łódź.

Our auction "Post-War and Contemporary Art. Works on Paper" includes a unique drawing presenting a geometric outline of a human figure. The artist began to create the sketch in 1993, the same year in which he received the award from the Polish Foundation for Culture. In 2000, he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. The resulting form in Nowosielski's sketches of figures is distinguished by a strong outline, an extended body posture, a long face, and eyes with an almond shape. Contemporary artistic language and iconography, the influence of which is noticeable in the discussed drawing, were the main sources of inspiration and artistic tools for the creator's activities.

Portraits by Nowosielski gained importance already in the 1950s. Heads of characters and series of paintings presenting half-naked human figures in which the authors often referred to the art of Persia, India, or Byzantium bear a special resemblance. Secular themes were particularly popular in his later works, which was emphasized by Nowosielski himself: 

"I want to be a painter, quite simply a painter. And that is why, in recent years, I have started to eliminate the difference between the so-called icons that I paint and my secular paintings. Fortunately, eliminating differences neither eliminates all sensory reminiscences in icons nor religious thinking in secular images..." 

- Jerzy Nowosielski, Od 28 marca…, "Atelier" – Kwartalnik Artystyczny, Poznań, No. 2, 1993; ibid.: Janusz Marciniak, Odpowiedź ikony. Refleksja na marginesie wystawy Jerzego Nowosielskiego.