Jerzy Duda Gracz, AGM CONCERT, 1994

108.5 x 88.5 cm - oil, fiberboard Evening Concert, for the "WRATISLAVIA CANTANS" FESTIVAL, 1994

Signed l.d.: DUDA GRACZ . 1661/94 .

On the reverse on the plate l.g.:

- Author's sticker filled in by hand with details of the painting and signature;

- on the right: exhibition sticker [print]: WROCŁAW MUNICIPAL MUSEUM | Jerzy Duda Gracz - Pro memoria | Wrocław collection | 8 I - 13 II 2005, below: museum stamp;

- below: exhibition sticker [print]: Silesian Museum in Katowice | Jerzy Duda Gracz - | Pro memoria - | Wroclaw Collection | 19.02. - 10.04.2005, museum stamp on left.

- below: exhibition sticker [print]: Legnica Copper Museum | Jerzy Duda Gracz | Pro Memoria | - Wroclaw Collection 15.04. 2005 - 28.05. 2005, museum stamp below;

Inscription in marker p.g.: 11 XII. TAD. STRUG.

Image exhibited:

- Jerzy Duda Gracz - Pro memoria. Wrocław Collection, City Museum of Wrocław 8 I - 13 II 2005, Silesian Museum in Katowice 19 II - 10 IV 2005, Copper Museum in Legnica 15 IV - 28 V 2005;
- Prelude. Wroclaw collection, Gallery of the Agra-Art Auction House, Warsaw 28 I - 3 III 2023;
- Polish Summer. Duda Gracz at Tichauer, Tichauer Art Gallery, Tychy 1 VII - 24 IX 2023.

Reproduced image:

- Jerzy Duda Gracz. Pro memoria. Wroclaw collection (exhibition catalog), Wroclaw City Museum, Wroclaw 2005, p. 34, color illustrations, cat. item 26;
- Prelude. Wroclaw collection (exhibition catalog), Agra-Art, Warsaw I 2023, p. 25, color ill., cat. no. 8;
- Polish Summer. Duda Gracz at Tichauer, Tichauer Art Gallery, Tychy VI 2023, p. 46, color ill.



When, in September 1991, the exhibition of Aristocratic-Historical Paintings by Jerzy Duda Gracz was one of the elements of the "Wratislavia Cantans" festival in Wroclaw, in the pages of the festival bulletin, the artist spoke about his relationship with the people of music: The atypicality of my participation in this festival comes from the atypicality of the Polish musical environment, which treats my art in a normal way, which is a phenomenon in Polish conditions. Especially over the past 11 years, the music community has perceived what I do in purely substantive, artistic terms, never in non-artistic categories, which have now become mandatory in Polish culture. I'm thinking of political, accountability categories, because these are the norms in Polish culture today. (quoted by Marek Brzeźniak, Duda Gracz cantans, "Trybuna Śląska," No. 204, September 5, 1991). At the time, the opening of the Duda Gracz exhibition was accompanied by a concert by a vocal ensemble from Warsaw, "Il canto da camera," which performed, among other pieces, Missa Rorata by Grzegorz Gervase Gorczycki, one of the most outstanding Polish composers of the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, born in Bytom - a city that in the early 1990s boasted a permanent Gallery by Jerzy Duda Gracz, who had a strong connection to Silesia throughout his life. It was noted in the press that Duda Gracz's exhibition at the "Wratislavia Cantans" festival became a major event in Wroclaw.

Friendly relations between the artist and the organizers of the "Wratislavia Cantans" festival continued in the following years, as evidenced, among other things, by the presented painting Image 1661 (Evening Concert; For the "Wratislavia cantans" festival) from 1994. The figure of a preoccupied, tormented man seen in the painting seems to find solace in the music present in the landscape, and personified in the form of a russet playing a pipe. The peculiar musicality of the Polish landscape in a very characteristic way, typical of Duda Player, with all its nostalgia and melancholy - developing here rhythmically in the diagonal composition of the painting - will return many more times in the artist's work, and will gain its fullest expression in the later "Chopin" series, which will also become one of the high points in Duda Player's painting.



♣ 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 collections 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.