Culture

They felt the winds of a generational revolution. They rebelled against abstraction

I remember the time when Max, the second child, was to be born. Jan did not want to know what the newborn’s gender would be. He accepted both. It was then that he painted a series of abstract, almost op-art-like canvases entitled Albo-albo [Either-Or]. Wavy, red-green stripes, creating the illusion of movement. And in the center, something that looked like a sprout, curl or flame. The embryo of something that had not yet become a person but was already a seed of life.

There are artists for whom an excessive need to create, a kind of over-creativity, becomes… an obstacle. An obstacle in obtaining high prices on the art market. This is the case for Jan Dobkowski. However, this was not a problem for him personally – that is, he was not interested in what did or didn’t work marketing-wise. He is an artist by birth, not by art dealers.

He turned eighty this June. It’s nothing for him – he does not notice the passage of time. “If we believe in the soul, there is no passing away. Only matter changes. I ponder life and death. But I really think that I am immortal ”– Jan Dobkowski confessed this more than a decade ago.

He never ceases to be surprised by the world. He considers life a miracle, including his own earthly existence. Over 30 years ago, he painted his largest format painting (nearly 4 meters high and six meters wide) …a życie sobie płynie… [...and life goes by...]. So what if the years fly by? Since the line of life is so fascinating that it cannot be drawn?

Because Jan can describe everything with a line. He is a special case of a painter for whom drawing is the foundation, like for those Renaissance masters who considered disegno [drawing] to be the basis of all things invented by man.

Line of the Rebel

The end of the 1960s. In the Modern Gallery in Warsaw, at the back of the Grand Theatre, which was then run by Janusz Bogucki, you could see something different than in the official showrooms. One of the first shows there was called “Secesja –secesja?” [Art Nouveau – Art Nouveau?]

The exhibition gave a voice to young artists who opposed the already fossilized but ubiquitous abstraction known as Informalism. For these rebels, the future was a new figuration.

Classifying them under Art Nouveau was not accurate. The only thing they had in common with Art Nouveau was a penchant for a flexible, organic line. They were Polish pioneers of the direction called Pop Art, by which our compatriots were looking for their own solutions.

Besides, the realities of Communist Poland were much different in comparison to the situation in capitalist countries. Despite this, even in Poland, young people felt the winds of a generational revolution. They grew their hair out, dressed in colorful clothes, and put on handmade jewelry.

Among them were two known as Neo-neo-neo. Triple repetitions, somewhat of a joke. Dobson and Jurry, Jan Dobkowski and Jerzy Ryszard Zieliński. Two students and then graduates of Jan Cybis, the authority of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts at the time. They had similar concepts of art. Both focused on drawing and the synthetic treatment of the form of the human body. The color was laid flat and plain. Contrary to the coloristic tradition, they did not blur the contours and they did not mix paints on the palette. On the contrary, their shapes were as sharp as a razor blade.     SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE 
  It seemed as if they cut out silhouettes from colored aple [single-color planes]. Except that they did not have access to expensive Western materials. They were looking for alternatives. They mixed oil paints with poster paints to make the shades more luminous. Not only did they paint, sometimes they also cut out shapes from low quality, though commercially available, flax board.

In the Neo-neo-neo duo, Zieliński had a greater sensitivity to politics, while Dobkowski did not allude to the realities of the time. His interests were in line with his age.

During the opening of the aforementioned Art Nouveau – Art Nouveau? exhibition, he was captivated by a certain young physics teacher named Maria. And here, Dobson’s art soared into the cosmos of sex. Skeletal figures grew into bodies.
Jan Dobkowski, Tańczące serce [Dancing Heart], work from 1971. Photo: Desa Unicum
In those years, Dobkowski’s trademark was the contrast of red and green, with the maximum intensity of complementary colors. The right optics made the contact lines of the perfectly-found color contrast appear to be white and vibrating. The figures, although static, seemed to move, flicker, double, triple and multiply. This impression was intensified by compositional complication, the inability to define what the background is and what appears on it; what’s on top and what’s underneath.

Up To Three Times “M”

Him and Maria (Maya) never parted. For many years they’ve lived in a “high-rise” (a 12-storey apartment building from the 1970s) at Bernardyńska Street in Warsaw.

When the young Dobkowskis lived in this apartment, it seemed to be a paradise in the living conditions of Communist Poland: two levels, the lower one being the living quarters and upstairs (already on the 13th floor) a large studio with a balcony. A marvelous view and in the exclusive neighborhood of other artists delighted with similar “luxuries” (including Franciszek Starowieyski and Barbara Szubińska). The Dobkowski’s apartment was visible from a distance: a characteristic cut-out, one of Janek’s compositions, but on a macro scale, was hung on the wall by the balcony.

The meetings that took place there – on this 12th and 13th floor – were handled culinarily by Maya (it was a time of social fraternity, with unannounced arrivals on the name days of one of the hosts). Today, it is difficult to imagine what miracles she had to perform in those impoverished times in order to be able to feed (and provide drink for) a dozen or more, sometimes unexpected guests.

Jan appreciated it and still appreciates it. Unlike many artists, he is constant in his feelings. He doesn’t need emotional excitement to work. One woman is enough for him – the woman of his life. Maria, Maya. From the moment they met, Jan’s work underwent a metamorphosis – though perhaps not perceptible to everyone. This was the first “M”.

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Then their two children were born: Marianka and Maksymilian, both baptized with names including (versions of) those of their parents.

The fourth “M” is love. The driving force behind Dobkowski’s activities. Love for life, the world and translating this into a more or less abstract vision.

I’ve followed Jan’s transformations and activity with amazement and admiration: one of the outliers of painting, who is indifferent towards fashion, success and money. At least to where he doesn’t strive for them. What is essential is that which gives life a kick.

I remember the time when Max, the second child, was to be born. Jan did not want to know what the newborn’s gender would be. He accepted both. It was then that he painted a series of abstract, almost Op-Art-like canvases entitled Albo-albo [Either-Or]. Wavy, red-green stripes, creating the illusion of movement. And in the center, something that looked like a sprout, curl or flame. The embryo of something that had not yet become a person but was already a seed of life. Either, or.

He exhibited some of these compositions at the Grażyna Hase Gallery (this gallery was at 6 Marszałkowska Street in Warsaw, operating after the introduction of martial law). One day, after the opening, a lady came there – simply to see the exhibition. Unexpectedly, she ordered herself to be led out of the rooms because the canvases were “attacking” her.

This is the best evidence that Dobkowski successfully tapped the Op-Art desires to animate static works and utilize the many principles of optics.

How to Reach the Line

Jan, though not always talkative, was eager to tell about his travels. He gesticulated, recreating different scenes with his voice and body. A drunken sailor lunged at him and Dobson resisted. “What? You’re coming at me with a knife? I have a knife too!” He charged because he actually didn’t have one. However, he was strong and knew how to stand up for himself, no matter the flag he was under or on which latitude. Thanks to this, he survived journeys that the delicate would not have. For what he saw was his and for art.

He sailed where few people fared in the times of Communist Poland. He traveled on freighters, without comforts, cheaply, but to far-away, exotic places. He had pieces of cardboard and watercolors with him. He tried to understand the meaning of the world, the meaning of the cosmos.

He knew how to defend himself – he had energy and strength, which was useful to him more than once in ports, among hot-blooded sailors. He went on voyages for many months without contact (or infrequent connections) with home. These experiences resulted in a cycle of paintings carried out after his return, or smaller ones, made while still onboard. How can one draw delicate watercolor lines on rocking waves?
This is one of Jan’s secrets. He recalled that he remembered the rhythm of the ocean most of all. What is this force that moves this vastness of waters? What is our human role/position in space?

Dobkowski is not a philosopher – at the same time he becomes one when he grabs a drawing pen, brush or felt-tip pen. He reflects on the genesis of our species, painting like the primordial artists on the walls of the Lascaux caves. Dobkowski identifies with them, but by no means imitates them. He felt it somehow, understanding it by instinct during his far-away journeys.

Past and present, life and passing, being and not being. He tries to describe everything, expressing it with a line, which seems to have no limits for him. It’s his tool, his method of studying all natural phenomena, of exploring the mysteries of matter and human existence.

Just as the flexibility of the line drawn by Dobkowski is amazing, so are the number of means that he uses. Canvases, brushes, oils, watercolors, a drawing pen? He is perfect in all techniques. Computer graphics? Here you go. Sketching and drawing compositions are not for him. Everything appears immediately, from a gesture, with the certainty that it must be so. An unmistakable eye and imagination.

Anyway, you don’t need traditional tools – the line can be “drawn” with string, fishing line, neon or a cutout from colored foil scattered in the open air. Or with cutouts made of transparent plexiglass, a material unknown in Poland in the 1970s, the cutting and assembly of which Dobkowski mastered by trial and error. What didn’t he try – even “drawing” with fire, or rather with flames placed in the landscape. As he said himself, he involved four elements: fire, water, earth and air.

His emotions were communicating to others. I remember an unusual case. I was (for the first and last time) the commissioner of the open-air exhibition “Osieki '79”, which I organized under the slogan “Czwarty wymiar” [“The Fourth Dimension”]. Many invited, and not only invited, artists came. Among the former was Jan.
He surprised everyone with his installation “Płonący kwadrat” [“Burning Square”]. What did he do? He placed dozens of empty food cans under the open sky (at that time, they had to be obtained and emptied first, that means eating, to the joy of those participating) filled with kerosene, with lit wicks – like oil lamps. He arranged the cans, measuring the distances precisely, into a square shape. It was night, a cloudless August sky... Suddenly, Franciszek Starowieyski entered the center of the “square”, shirtless as usual. Following him, some participants of the gathering, as if guided by instinct, entered the area “fenced” by the flames. Some threw off their clothes, others started to dance. And then, above the “Burning Square”, planes began to circle – there was a military unit nearby.

Where was the line here? Dobkowski insisted that he marked it with flames. That it existed, although it was invisible on our human plane.

Not An Abstractionist

What underpins the phenomenon of Dobkowski’s art? In my opinion, he interlaces the impossible into a whole: birth and death; eroticism and existentialism; individualism and the eternal rhythm of the universe. From the perspective of art, it is even more amazing: in the works of this artist there is no border between figuration and abstraction. Almost imperceptibly, he can transform forms – be they human or resembling other organisms, or plants or trees, or landscapes – into a space that draws you in with its very substance. There is no stagnancy in it, it is always in motion, subject to rhythms and currents. When viewed from a distance, thin lines turn into space. Flat surfaces of canvases or drawings gain three-dimensionality. Sometimes they bring to mind the depth of the ocean, or the grass of the savannah, other times it seems like the waving air itself. It happens that they are both shadow and light.

At a time when Poland was living with the fears of martial law, Dobkowski changed the color of his paintings. Instead of red and green (or blue), he started using dark, almost black backgrounds. He marked them with thinly-drawn lines of color. This is how one of the most significant – at the same time non-literal – compositions of the early 1980s was created. The Polish flag covered with a mourning pall emerged from the gloom. Outlined in the upper corner, composed of thin white and red lines, which was perceived from a distance as the Polish flag.

In fact, there are no such experiences or emotions in Jan’s life that would not translate into paintings.

Many people have written about the work of Jan Dobkowski, as have I on more than one occasion. Now I am adding what is less official. He had his golden years, a shower of awards, endless exhibition dates and moments of decline in interest. And he keeps doing his own thing – and doing it differently, though in his own way. A fortunate man.

– Monika Małkowska

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists


–Translated by Nicholas Siekierski

On the occasion of the artist’s 80th birthday, in Desa Unicum in Warsaw (1a Piękna Street), until August 24, 2022, you can view the monographic exhibition „Jan Dobkowski. Podróż do uniwersum” [“Jan Dobkowski: Journey to the Universe”].
Main photo: Exhibition of works by Jan Dobkowski at the Desa Unicum Gallery. Photo: Marcin Koniak/Desa Unicum
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