Edward Dwurnik (1943-2018), Road to the East, 1985

Author: Edward Dwurnik (1943-2018)
Title: "Road to the East."
Year: 1985
Dry needle on paper
Dimensions: 63.5 x 49.5 cm, 78.5 x 62.5 cm (with frame)
Signed, dated and described in pencil below the composition:
"dry needle 10/11, 2001 [stamp] 'Road to the East' E. Dwurnik 85".
Condition: good, yellowing, creases at the edges of the frame.
The series of works was created, among other things, under the influence of reading the memoirs of Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski and is dedicated to people exiled by the Stalinist regime to Siberia.

Born in Radzymin, he studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1963-70. During his studies, starting in 1965, he began the series Hitchhiking (continued to this day), in which he portrayed cities and towns from the perspective of a "bird's flight", in the field of interest of the artist, in addition to architecture, was the life and customs of the inhabitants. In 1972-78, the series Sportsmen is created, in which he depicts marginal people, sly people, smokers of the cheapest "Sport" brand cigarettes at the time. Around 1980 there was a merger of the series Sportsmen and Workers /implemented since about 1975/. Mockery and criticism of those leading a "sporting" life of their fellow countrymen / it was also a reaction to the pushy, instrumental glorification of the hegemon - i.e. the working class, by the propaganda of the time / was abandoned in favor of a sense of solidarity with the portrayed people. The artist's recent series are: Enumeration, Diagonals, Flowers, a return to Hitchhiking and the Blue series.
The author of more than 3 thousand paintings accompanying our lives , material
and spiritual record of our culture. He passed away on October 28, 2018 in Warsaw.