Jerzy STAJUDA (1936-1992), Untitled - 1404, 1963

watercolor, ink, pen, paper; 19 x 11 cm (clear passe-partout);
numbered and dated at bottom: 1404 , [19]63 (in pencil).

I became a painter for three reasons: firstly, Tadeusz Brzozowski brought me a jar of Venetian turpentine as a gift, secondly, Stefan Gierowski popped down to Falenica to do a correction for a "younger colleague," and thirdly, I met Grochowiak. He was 23, I was 21, and he referred to me as a painter," is how Jerzy Stajuda recalled the beginnings of his relationship with painting. The artist created a lot, exhibited mainly abroad. He sometimes referred to his work as "hypnagogic painting," something captured on the borderline between dream and java. He memorably wrote down dreams or dictated them to friends. He experimented with "automatic" drawing. Aleksandra Semenovich, the painter's life companion, recalled that "sometimes he drew in a drunken stupor; the drawings fell like leaves on the floor, he never looked at them afterwards." The painter himself noted in his diary: "Hangover, so from the morning painting with acrylics - very good. Drawing auto - bad." In his spare moments he indulged in his hobbies: studying Chinese calligraphy (as he claimed - it messed with his head) and.... morphology of warships. With persistence and precision he glued together, with the help of his sons, successive models of battleships and destroyers. (Stanislaw Gezinski)