In relation to the announcement of Minister of Health from 20th March 2021 all museums and art galleries need to be closed – please be advised that the current exhibition will be made available only after prior appointment by phone (510230269, 600087785, 601734060) or by e-mail (ego.galeriaego@gmail.com).

Stanisław Fijałkowski, who died on November 4 last year (on his 98th birthday), was one of the outstanding contemporary painters and graphic designers. By art critics, he is sometimes considered to be one of the leading representatives of Łódź avant-garde artists from the so-called Strzemiński’s circle.

At the beginning of the new millennium, the Ego Gallery established contact with the artist, which resulted in numerous exhibitions in our city, accompanied by meetings with authors and publishing houses.The present – posthumous exhibition is our modest tribute to the Professor, an expression of admiration and deep gratitude for his art and presence in our lives. During the exhibition, a film about the artist, “Intentional Being” (from 2018) by Małgorzata Potocka will be available. 

The artist was born in 1922 in Zdołbunów in Volhynia (now Ukraine). In the years 1944-1945 he was forced to work in Królewiec. After the war, he and his family settled in Gdańsk, and in 1946 he changed his place of residence to Łódź, which was dictated by the choice of the university. From that moment on, he was associated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź (then the PWSSP), initially as a student of Władysław Strzemiński and Stefan Wegner (diploma in 1951 in the studio of Ludwik Tyrowicz), then as a teacher, he continued his work at his alma mater (from 1983 as an independent professor). In the 1980s and 1990s, he was a guest lecturer at the Universities of Giessen, Mons and Marburg.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Stanisław Fijałkowski developed a separate and original style, the essence of which – to quote the words of the author himself – was contained in the constantly undertaken attempt to “harmonize the emotional and intellectual attitude, intuition with consciousness, individual expression with collective content”. He described his creative activities in symbolic terms, treating the symbol as the most accurate form of expressing the complex spiritual reality of the world. From the very beginning, he clearly defined his own creative path through his attitude towards the masters from whom he learned, in particular from the aforementioned Władysław Strzemiński, but also from the classics of the European avant-garde, such as Wasyl Kandinsky or Kazimierz Malewicz, whose books he translated into Polish *.

It should be emphasized that in most of his works, both in his paintings, drawings and graphics, the artist took up the same thematic threads that make up the impressive series (e.g. Highways, Talmudic Studies, Variations on the number four, mourning images etc.) and although he achieved international success relatively quickly in the field of graphics, he considered himself above all a painter. 

Stanisław Fijałkowski has received many prestigious national awards, such as: The Jan Cybis Prize and Cyprian Kamil Norwid Awards, The Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis and others. In 2002, he received an honorary doctorate from The Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź; this distinction had an important and symbolic character for him.

The artist’s works are in respected collections in Poland and abroad, incl. the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

The Ego Gallery has published three monographic publications documenting the Professor’s work: “Prace na papierze”, “Grafika” and “Prace na papierze II”.