GRUPPA
-it's happening now - Together in one place.....
Maryla Sitkowska -text from the catalog of THE GRUPPA exhibition -
Zachęta Gallery in 1992.
In the „bolt from the blue” landscape, as Poland
during the martial law period maybe described, among the numerous
phenomena harbingering the forthcoming transformation, there was
the Gruppa, a group of six artists
of the same generation, painters occasionally practising other disciplines,
but first and foremost engaged in interpersonal artistic activities,
which justifies the above qualification. lf only their output in
painting
( or, for that matter, drawing, sculpture, etc.) were
taken into account the Gruppa
would amount to: Ryszard Grzyb, Paweł Kowalewski, Jarosław Modzelewski,
Włodzimierz Pawlak,
Marek Sobczyk, and Ryszard Woźniak. The gap between the Gruppa's
manifestation of its uniqueness and its members individualities,
no less distinct than the former quality, stands for what usually
defines an art group, namely, its programme. The Gruppa is an association of six distinct artistic individualities who have
the same strategy rather than a programme. In other words, it is
a group oriented inwards, at mutual inspiration rather than a progress
towards
a goal, i.e. giving shape to a superior vision of the
world or art. This does not mean that the individual members of
the group do not set themselves a goal of a vision to be carried
into effect, but they do so on an individual basis, on their own
account. We may ask about the origin of the Gruppa and the sources
of its striking longevity, of which this exhibition on the 10th*
anniversary of its first joint appearance is the best proof.
/* on the 20th now - this text is ten years old /
There would
be no exaggeration in describing the Gruppa as the emanation of
the attitudes and artistic expression of the 1980s. This is evident
both in museums and synthetic studies of recent art where the Gruppa
features among the phenomena of those years of crucial importance
to the history of postwar Poland that have fund their fullest expression
in painting rather than Iiterature, film or any other art. The Iink
between the Gruppa and its time does not consist in its imitation
of attitudes and opinions widespread in that decade of civil resistance,
crowned with the recovery of independence. In their visions and
in their painting procedures, the Gruppa members go beyond their
historic time, both in their criticism of the past, and their diagnosis
of the current realities, in which they penetrate their deepest
structure. Thus they work for the future, not through contrived
projects and stipulations, thoroughly compromised by ideologues,
but, motivated by the conviction that learning the truth of themselves
and the surrounding world is the source of freedom and the courage
of going on. (... )
WE EXPRESS THANKS TO
OUR SPONSORS
 
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