Blog

Danuta Urbanowicz — My Teacher
Danuta Urbanowicz — my teacher, quiet and unassuming in the way she carried herself. She would approach the easel almost unnoticed, simply to look, to point with her hand. Her silence and a single gesture often said more than many words spoken by my other teachers. She is someone to whom I owe a great deal.

Danuta Urbanowicz, associated with the Nowa Huta Group and Kraków’s artistic community, was one of my teachers.

Only after many years do I see clearly how deeply certain encounters remain within us. In my painting today, the material substance of the work itself has become increasingly important — its surface, relief, traces, layers, everything that remains in the paint after the work of the hand and the passage of time.

I am not trying to continue the painting of the Nowa Huta Group or to recreate the visual language of that generation. This is not a quotation. These are my roots.

I grew up in Nowa Huta, and Danuta Urbanowicz was one of the people from whom I learned how to look at painting. Many years later, when I returned to painting myself, matter once again found its place at the centre of my work — now on my own terms and with materials drawn from my own life.

That is why the term “matter painting” is not an accidental classification for me. It also has a personal lineage.

I will return here to Danuta Urbanowicz and to what she taught me.