Jerzy Duda Gracz, NADRZECE - AGE, 1999

47.0 x 72.5 cm - oil, plate signed l.d.: DUDA GRACZ 2388/99 .

On the reverse side of the plate, on the middle panel, author's sticker with details of the painting, l.g.: two exhibition stickers of the Silesian Museum in Katowice and the Copper Museum in Legnica, next to it a marker inscription: 46 V 97, along the l. edge: p. Olbrych, along the bottom edge a dedication: to Mr. and Mrs. | Barbara and Aleksander Olbrych | with cordiality | Jerzy Duda. G.



Image exhibited:

- Jerzy Duda Gracz. Pro memoria. Wroclaw Collection, Wroclaw City Museum 8 I - 13 II 2005, Silesian Museum in Katowice 19 II - 10 IV 2005, Copper Museum in Legnica 15 IV - 28 V 2005.



Reproduced image:

- Jerzy Duda Gracz. Pro memoria. Wrocław collection (exhibition cat.), City Museum of Wrocław, Wrocław 2005, p. 82, color illustrations, cat. no. 79.



The village of Nadrzecze, located in Roztocze, Bilgoraj County, was one of the places that inspired Duda Gracz. The artist wrote: The geography of the places where I paint is so strangely arranged that they are laid out on the borderlands, or more nicely put, on the borderlands of Poland, in the four directions of the world. (...) In the East, in today's vestigial Borderlands, beyond Bilgoraj is the sandy Nadrzecze and the Serving House for the Polish Art of Word, Music and Image, created by actors: Alicja Jachiewicz and Stefan Szmidt. Duda Gracz was a regular guest at the headquarters of this foundation. The artist came to Nadrzecz for the first time in 1995 and, as Stefan Szmidt recalled, Duda Gracz said that this was the place where he would like to spend the next years of his life, "maybe the last...". Later, every year he came to Nadrzecz for a month or two. Sometimes he would arrive in early summer, then leave and still return in September, because he was inspired by the September sunshine. He was enchanted by the landscapes of Roztocze.

Such places as Nadrzecze, the artist held in high esteem, calling them sanctuaries. He said of them: My Sanctuaries are, of course, eremitic, located on the outskirts. There it is quiet, peaceful and far from the hustle and bustle of Very Important Everyday Things. There are skies, clouds, rains, snows, fogs, sunrises and sunsets, meadows, fields, grasses, trees, gardens, streams, ponds and byways, old cottages, crooked houses, mossy fences.... (...) It's best to paint all this according to the recipe (...) of St. Joseph Chelmonski, that is, "at dawn, during fog, at dusk or on bright moonlit nights." That's when the Landscape gets organized, "amphibious", sacralized, because it ceases to be a plaything of flickering, changing impressions of the sun, and it is then that one can best see in it what is alive: a Man, a Cow, a Dog or a Hen. (Jerzy Duda Gracz, Notes on Life and the Art of Passing, in Duda Gracz. Provincial and Municipal Images. Kresy polskie 2000, p. 9)

The painting Nadrzecze - Evening from 1999, presented with us, is close to the motifs known from the work of - mentioned by Duda Gracz - Jozef Chelmonski, with his idea of the Polish landscape, depicted at different times of the day, with all the moodiness and characteristic dim colors, containing, however, a richness of tones and qualities.




♣ 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 Museums 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 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.