KULISIEWICZ GRANTS

Tadeusz Kulisiewicz (1899-1988)

Tadeusz Kulisiewicz's artistic production occupies a unique place in the history of both Polish and Western art. The artist, born in Kalisz, studied painting at Poznan and Warsaw, where he was taught by such distinguished artists as Wladyslaw Skoczylas or Milosz and Mieczyslaw Kotarbinski. Skoczylas's influence is especially distinct in Kulisiewicz's graphic works.

The artist practised graphic arts (chiefly wood engraving) until World War II, when his studio burnt down during the Warsaw Rising. It was then that he devoted all his talent to drawing, which became his favourite manner of expression. For most artists, drawing is only a tool, a preliminary technique, whereas Kulisiewicz regarded drawing as an end, perfect in itself.

Curiosity about the world, both nearby and distant, is the characteristic feature of Kulisiewicz's works. In his early, prewar graphic portfolios, he successfully rendered the beauty of Polish mountains, the climate of life of the highlanders and their extraordinary relationship to nature. Then he traveled a lot and increasingly far: to France, Belgium, England, Italy (1937) and, after the war, to China, Mexico, India, Cuba, and Brasil. All those travels resulted in series of drawings which recorded the beauty of various landscapes, and highlighting their exotic qualities. The landscapes often include man. This is another, extremely important subject of Kulisiewicz's art.

It is striking that the differences between the people he portrayed seem to be obliterated in all his drawings related to journeys, more or less distant. Ethnic types and cultural differences are mixed and blended. As a result, it is Everyman that is the main character of Kulisiewicz's stories. The artist's landscapes undergo a similar evolution. Now and then, one is surprised to discover something familiar among the most exotic landscapes, or, on the contrary, something inconspicuously exotic in a Polish landscape.

Kulisiewicz won a number of art and state prizes; he was an associate member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin ( 1955), an Honorary Citizen of Kalisz ( 1960), as well as an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence (1965).
He died in Warsaw on 18 August 1988.