Boguslaw SZWACZ (1912-2009), Self-portrait in a studio, 1956

gouache, watercolor, paper; 86 x 61 cm;
Signed and dated p. d.: SZWACZ /56-III.
In the catalog of the monographic exhibition "Boguslaw Szwacz", Struve's Villa, Warsaw 2004, item 12; the painting is also reproduced on the cover of the catalog.
In 1939 he graduated with honors) from the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, from which he became a lecturer after the war. From 1946 he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, and from 1948 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1983, he received the title of professor of fine arts. In the second half of the 1940s, he exhibited with the Group of Young Visual Artists. In 1947, he went to Paris and was a scholarship recipient of the Ministry of Culture and Art. In Paris, he joined the group "Le Surréalisme Révolutionnaire." In 1948 he returned to Warsaw, became associated with the Club of Young Artists and Scientists, his works were presented at the First Exhibition of Modern Art (1948/49). He participated in almost all official exhibitions of the Socialist Realist period. He adhered to the concept of the so-called Ars-Horme (Art of Moving the Imagination), an original and one of the few general theories of art that existed in Poland today. Beginning in 1956, he developed the Ars-Horme theory. Its assumptions he announced in an artistic manifesto at an open-air workshop in Osieki in 1977. This theory is reflected in his artworks, which, by referring to nature, tradition, culture and knowledge, are meant to appeal to the viewer's imagination and reconcile him with the outside world. In 1955, he abandoned figurative painting for abstraction. He was active in avant-garde circles; he exhibited, among others: at the Second and Third Exhibition of Modern Art in Warsaw (1957 and 1959), Gallery
Krzywe Kolo Gallery in Warsaw (1962 and 1963), at the 1st Biennial of Spatial Forms in Elblag (1965), the "Golden Grape" Symposia in Zielona Gora (1973 and 1976). He had solo exhibitions in Warsaw galleries, among others: Zachęta (1954, 1978); Kordegarda (1987), Studio (1992, 1993); Cracow's Krzysztofory Gallery (2003); Maria Ochalska Gallery in Struve's Villa (2004) Poznan's Piekary Gallery (2004). He received awards in the J. Spychalski painting competition (first prize in 1974 and honorable mention in 1975).