Jerzy Duda Gracz, KRASNOBRÓD - DANCE A LA POLONAISE, 2004.

80,0 x 70,0cm - oil, plate signed l.d.: DUDA GRACZ . 2936/04.

on the reverse: author's sticker with details of the painting, below dedication: To Mr. Zenon Żyburtowicz | with friendship | Jerzy Duda. G. | 10.06.2004.


The painting is accompanied by the framed photograph, presented below, depicting Jerzy Duda Player during the last plein-air in Lagow in 2004, taken by Zenon Żyburtowicz. During a walk with the photographer, Duda Gracz, pointing out the horizontal lines present in the landscape, spoke of his associations with the musical stave. The photograph will be a bonus for the purchaser of this work.


The painting Krasnobród - Danse a la Polonaise is being created at a time when Duda Gracz has already painted most of the paintings from his Chopin series, in which he attempted to translate the great composer's music into the language of painterly forms.

Duda Gracz visited the eponymous Krasnobród in search of places associated with Frederic Chopin. One of the paintings in Duda Gracz's Chopin cycle Krasnobród Song No. 17 in E-flat minor, Opus 74 "Mogilka," refers to the song "Melody," written by Chopin to the words of an 1847 poem by Zygmunt Krasinski, which appeared as the motto to the poem "The Last." Words from Krasinski's poem appear in Krasnobród on a monument above the grave of insurgents from 1863.

Krasnobrod - Danse a la Polonaise is a painting that also echoes the Chopin cycle, by referring to the motif of the Polish dance. The form and atmosphere of the painting are close to the works of this monumental cycle, although in this case it is not a painterly illustration of a specific piece by the most famous Polish composer. It is known from the artist's statement that the idea of realizing this cycle was considered by him to be the crowning work of his oeuvre, and most of the paintings from the last year of Duda Gracz's life remained within the circle of climates close to Chopin's music. The combination of patriotic ideas (in the person of the lancers depicted) and passion and eroticism (in the figure of a lady, dressed in a transparent gown) evokes the emotional aura of the Polish composer's romantic work.



♣ to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, will be added a fee resulting from the right of the creator 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, Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk, the Jagiellonian University Museum in Collegium Maius in Krakow, 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 collections of the Uffizi in Florence, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Ghent City Museum, the "BAWAG" Foundation in Vienna and the Vatican Collection, as well as in the galleries and collections of 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.