Exhibition of paintings by Maria Wnęk from the collection of the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Kraków
The preview of the exhibition: 23rd October 2013, 1:00 p.m.
The exhibition is on display until 18th November.
Curator of the exhibition: Zuzanna Zubek-Gańska
Artwork: Jacek Gański
Admission to the preview and to the exhibition is free.
The exhibition is on display Mon – Fri, 11:00 a.m. – 5.30 p.m.
Maria Wnęk was born in 1922 in Olszanka near Stary Sącz, in a large peasant family; she went to elementary school for four years only. She was a deeply religious person, devoted pilgrim and an active participant of church fairs (she has always worn a white gown there); she has shown particular devotion to the sanctuary in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska.Maria Wnęk has been developing her artistic technique since 1960s at the Culture Centre in Nowy Sącz where she was discovered by a painter Ewa Harsdorf and where she was named Lady Nikifor after a famous Polish naïve painter.
“Maria Wnęk can’t find peace in any place. She was allotted a flat a few times but her behavior always antagonised her neighbours who insisted on her relocation; their interventions contributed to her hospitalization in a psychiatric institution. For a long time she was sleeping rough at railway stations”, (A. Jackowski). She used the address: Nowy Sącz P.O. Box 148, which became her signature and which she uses to begin all her ‘biographies’ at the back of her paintings where she tells what ‘the painting shows…’ (most often they are dramatic events from her life in presence of saints) as well as “Urgent message from Our Lord Jesus...” (admonition/message to the world from Jesus sent through the Artist).
For her paintings she uses what’s at hand: oils, poster paints or tempera and she applies them on the most accessible materials such as cardboard, plywood, paper and sometimes – canvas.
Since 1980s, with increasing frequency, the artist was undergoing treatments at the Babiński Specialist Hospital in Kobierzyn near Kraków, to become a permanent resident there in her final years. Her works have been shown at numerous exhibitions. She is also represented in many private and museum collections such as the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne.
The text was prepared on the basis of the following publications:
- Aleksander Jackowski, Sztuka zwana naiwną,
- Ewa Krasińska: Malarstwo Marii Wnęk
The world of Maria Wnęk is filled with sacredness. Ordinary crowd scenes become a thick composition and take up the whole space of the picture. Figures in the crowd are placed frontally and look at the viewer with their almond-shaped eyes. The eyes and a heavy contour that creates their silhouettes resemble icon painting. The figures also belong to Maria’s sacredness; they are divine persons and saints. Saints accompany the Artist in her life, suggest topics for her paintings, and dictate messages written on the back of them. Those messages or ‘biographies’, as she calls them, seem to burst out of the limited space of the reverse of the painting. They make the paintings double-sided and without the ‘biographies’ the artist considered them invalid, unfinished. The artist also made characters in her paintings from people around her – evil neighbour who poured poison into her shoes, a neighbour who frowned upon her and hid her key or the parish priest whom Maria liked and who invited her for his name day party, or the manager of the art gallery where her works were presented.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a documentary made available by the Educational Film Studio:
"Kalwaria Marii Wnęk" (Maria Wnęk’s Calvary) – profile of Maria Wnęk, a folk painter from Olszanka. Filmmakers show her during her pilgrimage to Kalwaria Zebrzydowska. The film presents paintings by MariaWnęk from the collections of the Nowy Sącz District Art Museum, the Psychiatric Hospital in Kobierzyn and private collections of dr. Andrzej Stępniewski.
Produced and written by Andrzej Różycki. 1988.
Screenings: 11:00 a.m.- 5:30 p.m.