Jerzy Nowosielski, CERKIEW, 1980s.

35,0 x 55,0cm - oil, canvas signed on the reverse on canvas p.d.: J. Nowosielki [!]

Authenticity of the painting consulted with Andrzej Szczepaniak - art historian, curator of exhibitions, executive director of Starmach Gallery.

Over the years, he spent all his vacations on the trails of Malopolska and Podkarpacie: with friends he went to Podhale, with students to open-air workshops at the Academy of Fine Arts house in Harenda [...]. However, most of his vacation memories are of the Lemko region: the Krynica area, Dukla, Szczawnica, Kroscienko, the Beskid villages of Stryszawa, Sucha Beskidzka, Wysowa. "What pleases me most," he explained animatedly, "are situations when we move from one cultural circle to another. For example, Szczawnica, from which you can walk to the first Lemko villages, is a very important place - a person walks 6 kilometers on foot in an eastern direction, then through a gypsy settlement, then over such a river, a bridge - and immediately the Orthodox churches begin. I take a few steps and go from one cultural zone to another: not flying by plane, not buying a passport, not taking a train...". Still in the late 1990s, Zofia and Jerzy Nowosielski vacationed several times in Polany near Krynica, where they created a series of paintings of Lemko Orthodox churches from the area: Berest, Polany. "They annihilated Orthodox churches in Poland by the hundreds," the artist recalled in a 1992 interview. - I suffered a lot because of this. For something that I loved very strongly, to which I was emotionally attached, was being destroyed. And I thought to myself that if all those Orthodox churches, which I admired in my youth, were to disappear from the face of the earth, then let at least some trace of them remain in my painting. I simply started painting portraits of Orthodox churches, icons of Orthodox churches. Partly the ones I saw, partly the imaginary ones." (Krystyna Czerni, Nowosielski in Malopolska. Sacred Art, Malopolska Contemporary Art Museum Foundation, Krakow 2015, p. 15)

♣ a fee will be added to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, based on the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite).

Jerzy Nowosielski (Krakow 1923 - Krakow 2011) began his studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Krakow in 1940. In 1942 he stayed for less than a year in the St. John the Baptist Lavra near Lviv. There he studied the art of painting and the history of icons. After returning to Cracow in 1943, he re-established contacts with the circle of the future Cracow Group. After the war, he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Prof. Eugeniusz Eibisch (1945-1947). At the First Exhibition of Modern Art in Cracow in 1948/49, he showed paintings maintained in the geometric abstraction trend. During the years of Socialist Realism, he did not exhibit, dealing at the time with stage design and painting churches and orthodox churches. In 1955 in Lodz he presented his first solo exhibition, in 1956 he participated in the XXVIII Venice Biennale. From 1957 to 1962 he was a teacher at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Lodz, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, where he taught at the Faculty of Painting until his retirement in 1993. In the second half of the 1950s he achieved a distinctive style of nudes, landscapes and figural scenes in interiors, which he owed to his fascination with icons and his experience with sacred painting. In 1976, he took up monumental works anew, producing mural paintings, Stations of the Cross and designs for stained glass windows in the Church of Divine Providence in Wesola near Warsaw (1976-1979). The artist was widely recognized as an authority on art rooted in spiritual values.

Jerzy Nowosielski died on February 21, 2011 in Krakow, Poland.