Jerzy Nowosielski *

(Krakow, Poland 1923–2011)
Women with the mirror, 1980, signed and dated on the reverse, oil on canvas, 100 x 70 cm, framed

We are grateful to Andrzej Szczepaniak, curator, art historian, researcher and expert of the artist, for the information he kindly provided on this work.

Provenance:
Private Collection since the 1990s


“I don’t know why it happens like this, but certain spiritual matters that need to be renamed laboriously are best done in black. I don’t know why, I really don’t know everything.

This is where darkness, night lies. These are matters of night consciousness”

The consciousness of the icon, Jerzy Nowosielski interviewed by Paweł Kwiatkowski (1983), in: Jerzy Nowosielski, Art after the end of the world. Conversations, Znak, Kraków 2011, p. 225.

It all started in 1971, when Jerzy Nowosielski designed the set and costumes for Antigone directed by Helmut Kajzar for the Polish Theater in Wroclaw. He chose the ubiquitous and dominant black. Everything in this performance – an adaptation of Sophocles’ text – took place in black: walls, curtains and the characteristic long tunnel.
These experiences while working on Antigone bring about a new series of paintings in Nowosielski’s work – the so-called black paintings, or Nudes in the Darkroom, which he would create until the early 1980s.
In this very darker tone, he paints ethereal nudes, half-nudes, portraits and scenes with double nudes, in which female figures resembling apparitions emerge from the pitch-black background like glowing coals. They shimmer in an extraordinary way with shades of orange and red, as if they were burning with fire. Only halftones of blue, gray and concentrated reflections of light in the form of white appear suddenly.
Jerzy Nowosielski’s new series of paintings was another stage of the sublimation of the female body, taking it further and further into infinite areas of spirituality.
Celebration of bodily shapes and their sanctification. It was also another field of clash or struggle in his painting between the figurative and abstract elements, which took the pure form of a nocturne. “The Black Series” is another attempt to break out of the biological conditions of the body itself, which is constantly purifying itself and entering metaphysics.
Jerzy Nowosielski’s paintings, kept in a black range of colours, were his way of “freeing himself” and a kind of confirmation of his own independence as a painter – they were a pure manifestation of the freedom that governs his world.
There is another very significant aspect in these images; the issue of relegating art to the abyss of darkness, darkness, or to the sphere of penance and torment of the beloved body. There is also an overtone of experiencing suffering. Nowosielski’s other paintings, which he painted many times, are echoed here; icons from Saint Paraskeva – a 3rd century martyr from Iconium in Asia Minor (today Konya in Turkey), subjected to torture because of her refusal to deny her faith under Emperor Diocletian.
The cult of Saint Paraskeva, the Great Martyr, called Piatnica, is associated with Good Friday. The martyrdom of the saint at the beginning of the 4th century and her name (in Greek Παρασκευή - Paraskeví Friday) gave Saint Paraskeví Friday the nickname “Piątnica”, and her martyrdom is associated with the martyrdom of Jesus.
Andrzej Szczepaniak