Painting a sea is a very serious test for a painter. Many a brave has fallen artistically before the power of the sea. The writers shaped by the sea have become my guides in exploring this abstract element. I wanted to include something of this magnetic, powerful force in the paintings. Record the movement and space of water.
Agata Jóźwiak
The artist’s black ink works depicting the sea, rivers and mountains – usually calm, but suddenly threatening and unpredictable – are proof of how the mood and aura of a fleeting moment can be captured in light, sketchy ink and watercolour techniques, which require adherence to a wet-on-wet manner. It takes months and years of looking at the world to be able to freeze a moment with a few brush strokes. Looking at Agata Jóźwiak’s landscapes, we share the artist’s admiration for the beauty and majesty of nature. She has mastered the technique of monochromatic ink painting, which she owes to her long-standing study of the way of painting and the achievements of the old masters of the East who worked in poetry and painting.
Anna Katarzyna Maleszko
The exhibition presents paintings made on paper with Chinese and Japanese ink. They were created between 2017 and 2021 in the Tatra Mountains, Pomerania and the Baltic Sea.
Agata Jóźwiak – In 2006, she obtained a diploma in painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Mikołaj Kopernik University in Toruń. She took part in courses to improve her artistic skills in, among other things, illuminated painting and Far Eastern painting. She completed postgraduate studies in art history at the Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Scholarship holder of the National Centre for Culture in 2018 and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in 2022. She ran art workshops for highland children as part of the national programme “Culture – Interventions” organised by the National Centre for Culture. Author of the album: W głąb krajobrazu. Pejzaże Karpat Polskich (Into the Landscape. Landscapes of the Polish Carpathians) She belongs to the painting group Ścieżka Tuszu (Path of Ink). She popularises knowledge about painting and publishes on selected issues from the history of landscape painting. She is also interested in the relationship between painting and poetry. She has cooperated with environmental organisations, including the Natural Heritage Foundation and the Botanical Garden of the University of Warsaw, using her work for nature conservation activities. The main theme of her work is landscape. Since 2008, she has been painting Polish landscapes.
She has exhibited her works at solo exhibitions, among others: in Antoni Rząsa’s Gallery in Zakopane and the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw. Together with Ścieżka Tuszu, she presented her paintings, among others: in the Contemporary Art Gallery in Włocławek, in the Władysław Hasior Gallery of the Tatra Museum in Zakopane, at the University of Warsaw (Kazimierzowski Palace, Library of the University of Warsaw), during the 72nd Chopin Festival in Duszniki, as well as in the Tatra Mountains: in the mountain shelter in Roztoka Valley and the Five Polish Lakes Valley.
Works in collections: National Museum in Warsaw, the Asia and Pacific Museum, the Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw, the Tatra Museum and the District Museum in Sandomierz. Web page: www.agatajozwiak.com
curator of the exhibition: Agnieszka Gorzaniak