82.5 x 37.5 - dimensions in st. of frame
Signed in gold paint l.g.: . APOTHEOZE .; p.g.: . DVDA . GRACZ . PINX.
signed on reverse horizontally: "APOTHEOZE" | (ASP STUDENTS' PAINTING GROUP) | oil, dicta - 39 x 84 cm | Jerzy Duda-Gracz. 1967
The depiction of seven young art students in an allegorical setting belongs to a group of juvenile paintings created during the artist's studies at the Department of Graphics at the Katowice branch of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (1962-1968). The atypical - most likely second-hand - type of painting substrate, decorative, historicizing frame, as well as the unusually smooth manner of painting and the handling of strong contours, characterized the student workshop of Jerzy Duda Gracz.
Full of symbols and humorous detachment, Apotheosis - showing the very beginning of the future painter-moralist's creative path - undoubtedly deserves the status of a collector's rarity.
♣ to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, will be added a fee resulting from the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)
Jerzy Duda Gracz (Częstochowa 1941 - Łagów 2004)- painter, illustrator, stage designer, educator. He received his diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow at the Department of Graphics in Katowice in 1968. In 1976-82 he was a lecturer at the academy, then a professor at the Silesian University in Katowice. He also taught at the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw (1992-2001).
His paintings are characterized by technical virtuosity and attention to detail. He practiced art in the broadly defined realist convention with dominant figure deformation and grotesque. He created a world of unmasking, using the language of journalism and allegory. He is the author of several major projects, including the "Transfiguration" plafond in the church in Toporovo (1995) and the "Golgotha of Jasna Gora" series in the Monastery of the Pauline Fathers in Czestochowa (2000/2001).
The artist has had more than 180 solo exhibitions at home and abroad (including Berlin, London, Paris, Moscow, Rome, Vienna, Florence, Düsseldorf, Chicago, New Delhi, Munich, New York and others). He participated in about 300 national exhibitions and international presentations of Polish art. He represented Poland, among others, at the XLI Art Biennale in Venice in 1984, at the XX and XXI World Art Fairs in Cologne in 1986 and 1987, and at EXPO '92 in Seville.
Jerzy Duda Player's paintings are in the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw, Cracow, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk, the Jagiellonian University Museum in Collegium Maius in Cracow, the Museum of the Earth of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the art collection at Jasna Gora in Czestochowa and other district and city museums, and in private collections, including those of W. Ochman and W. Fibak; abroad - in the Uffizi collection in Florence, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Ghent City Museum, the "BAWAG" Foundation in Vienna and the Vatican Collection, as well as in galleries and collections in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Israel, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA, Venezuela, the UK, Italy and Hungary.
