Piotr C. Kowalski

Born in 1951 in Mieszków near Jarocin. He earned a degree in painting in 1978 from the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznań, where he studied in the studio of Prof. Stanisław Teisseyre. Full professor. A painter with many years of experience and a substantial body of work. Creator of numerous oil paintings and works in other media. Open to surprising experiments with the conventions of painting, he breaks established canons and our habits, while also abandoning the artist’s personal gesture, which has been sanctified in the tradition of painting. He allows others - chance encounters, animals, and the forces of nature - to co-create his paintings. He also uses natural colors to create his paintings, including: fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, rust, smoke, sludge, silt, dust, and bird, ant, and bark beetle guano - because, as Max Ernst said, “Paintings can be made with anything, including paint.”

Since 2004, together with Joanna Janiak, he has been creating the following series of paintings: “Megabytes of Painting,” “Berry Fresco,” and “Frosty Paintings.”

Author of the series:

• paintings created on an easel and off an easel

• paintings that are delightful, very delightful, and undelightful

• paintings that are transient, fleeting, and ephemeral

• paintings that are borderline, border-related, and foreign

• paintings that are polite and sinful - or rather, impolite

• paintings created in full sun, in the shade, without shade, and without a shadow of a doubt

• finite and infinite paintings,

• sharp and not-so-sharp paintings

• paintings created in mountain huts, on the trail, and those that could go to hell

• paintings created at high and low altitudes (on Giewont and in the Lubin mine)

• paintings painted unframed, framed, and framed by friendship

• paintings painted vertically, horizontally, and at an angle - the right angle, of course

• paintings painted on fire

• paintings painted on gas - admittedly a small flame, but still

• paintings that have been slashed and those that haven’t

• paintings made of plastic and in plastic 

• paintings painted on water and underwater

• paintings painted on a tree, from a tree, and in wood

• paintings painted quickly and very quickly

• paintings painted with others and for others

• paintings that are rough and very rough

• paintings painted slowly and those that, it would seem, must not be painted

Recipient of, among others:

The Silver Seal of the City of Poznań, the Silver “Gloria Artis” Medal for Merit to Culture, the ZPAP Gold Badge, the UAP Scholae Bene Merito Medal, and the Anti-Communist Opposition Activist Badge—for services to an independent Poland, 1956–1989; the Medal of the National Education Commission, the “Labor Omnia Vincit” Medal of the Hipolit Cegielski Society, the Herbapol Essence of Nature Award, the City of Poznań Artistic Award, and the Stanisław Taczak Medal for services to the Jarocin region—awarded by the Mayor of Jarocin

Works in the collections of, among others:

the Museum of Art in Łódź; the National Museums in Poznań, Szczecin, and Warsaw; Zachęta—National Gallery of Art in Warsaw; the Silesian Museum in Katowice; the Lubusz Region Museum in Zielona Góra; Drents Museum in Assen, the Netherlands; Arsenał Municipal Gallery in Poznań; Bielska Gallery in Bielsko-Biała; Szczecin Zachęta Contemporary Art Center; Mazovian Center for Contemporary Art “Elektrownia” in Radom; Voelkel Foundation in Poznań; University of Arts in Poznań; Labirynt Gallery in Lublin.