Andrzej Nowacki. Exploring the square

Life journeys 2
 

At around the turn of the millennium, Andrzej Nowacki met two people who in his words still play an important role in his life today; who are mentors and not least trusted friends: Bożena Kowalska, the indisputably most important art critic in the field of geometric art in Poland (Fig. 42) and Heinz Teufel, the famous German gallery owner and connoisseur of European concrete art (Fig. 43). The discussions and disputes conducted over many years with these two high-profile observers of his work gave him the opportunity to expand his artistic awareness and to deepen his understanding of the contexts of the present day. Through Bożena Kowalska, he came into contact with the Polish geometrists (Jerzy Kałucki, Koji Kamoji, Stanisław Fijałkowski, Zbigniew Dłubak, Jerzy Grabowski), and participated in a large number of workshops and exhibitions. In turn, his connection to Heinz Teufel opened the door to collector and artist circles in Germany (Horst Bartnig, Manfred Mohr, Andreas Brandt, in other words, the second generation of concrete art in Germany). (Fig. 44, 45) His friendship with the gallery owner also gave him the opportunity to meet great artists such as Max Bill, Bridget Riley, Paul Lohse and Antonio Calderara – a source of inspiration and at the same time, a kind of reflection for his own works. 

Naturally, the artist’s life journey also includes exhibitions, such as in Berlin, among them in the now closed Galerie Avantgarde, together with the Polish poster artist Jan Lenica, also a friend (Fig. 46). There were also exhibitions in Poland, to name just two major shows in Kraków (1992, 2001), in Szczecin (1996, 2004) and in Poznań. There followed a long list of exhibitions – in Japan, the US, Germany and Sweden. Each was a challenge; nearly each one was a kind of completion.

Other travels abroad are also worthy of mention, to the US and Japan. They brought new experiences and the confrontation with a different perspective onto his reliefs. Of great interest was the meeting with the Japanese public, who viewed the “pure” spar images with excited attentiveness. A knowledge of the tradition of Japanese striped fabrics for kimonos is required in order to understand the particularly high level of interest here. As one Japanese philosopher wrote: “As concerns geometric patterns, nothing expresses the relational as accurately as parallel lines. By pulling towards infinity and never meeting, they are the purest visual objectification of the relational. [...] The vertical spars have the levity of mist, or of willow twigs that are pulled down towards the Earth by gravity alone”.[7] The way in which the relief images were received in Osaka was therefore special and unique.

Nowacki’s travels to the US were also a success. There, he met a large number of interested gallery owners and collectors; he worked and exhibited his art. By this time, aside from the now countless numbers of private collectors throughout the world, his pictures were also on display in numerous museums of modern art, in Miami and Radom, in Chełm, Sczcecin, in Stuttgart and in Ostrava.

Of the many exhibitions organised by Andrzej Nowacki, or in which he participated, one deserves particular mention: the exposition in Sopot, where Nowacki showed his reliefs together with the abstract paintings of Wojciech Fangor. In the exhibition catalogue, Marta Smolińska wrote the following: “The works of both artists call ‘the density’ of the image boundaries into question and enter all the more intensively into the dialogue with the surrounding space [...] and in the case of such a rare meeting, also with themselves. The unavoidable result of this special, highly promising interaction are emotions that are invoked in the minds and imagination of the observers.”[8] Other exhibitions were of similar importance, such as in Bratislava (2015), or Stuttgart (2017) where his reliefs were hung next to works by great masters, including Max Bill, Bridget Riley and Josef Albers, and were made to prove their worth anew in this particular dialogue.

For many years now, Andrzej Nowacki has worked mainly in Berlin. In 2015–2016, he switched locations when he moved into a studio in the Czech Republic. Ostrava is the home city of Jan Svetlik, an industrialist as well as an art lover and collector, who made a space available to the artist on the site of the former Vitkovic foundry. (Fig. 47) Here, Nowacki experimented with the reduced colour of the relief in black and white. Here, he also began to create large-format, multi-part works: pictures in which two, three, four, six or even nine elements were compiled to create a new type of whole.

One high point of this latest creative period was the outstanding exhibition “At the edge of infinity” in Sopot in 2017. In the State Art Gallery in the city, he showed over 30 reliefs, including several multi-part reliefs, and a cycle of pastels on paper. The room was filled with vibrating, luminous energy that stimulated contemplation. As Hubertus Gaßner put it: “The rhythm of poetry, the rhythm of painting, this is where the personality of the artist is present, but not when they tell us something about themselves. Rather, it is when it takes effect through the vibration and pulsing, like a heart beating”. (Fig. 48–52)

In 2018, Andrzej Nowacki moved into a new, large studio in Berlin, where he has already created a large number of new reliefs, including reliefs on a large scale. The space and time seem to suit him. (Fig. 29) However, his exploration of the square has not yet been fully completed. The artist is constantly searching for new possibilities for expression, which correspond to his inner notion of “what can be seen” (Riley).