Brygida Wróbel-Kulik. Art, spaces, life worlds

Brygida Wróbel-Kulik was born in 1952 in Chorzów. She completed her studies in artistic print graphics with a focus on aquatint, the most picturesque form of intaglio printing, with Professor Mieczysław Wejman at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Krakowie). She obtained a second diploma in the field of applied graphics (posters) under the tutelage of Professor Stefan Maciej Makarewicz. She met her later husband, artist Irek Kulik, in 1971. In 1977 they settled down together in Katowice. Their apartment quickly developed into an open and lively space – into an artistic house which brought people together and created and reinforced connections.

The Kuliks had been travelling abroad since the 1980s: first to Greece when they were invited by artist friends for an exhibition in Thessaloniki (1981) and later to Paris. They never returned to Poland after one of these trips. Their path led them to Aachen, where Wróbel-Kulik quickly noticed significant fractures and tensions in the local artistic scene. While this experience moved and unsettled her deeply, her instinct was to take action. In Poland she had, despite the difficult political conditions, experienced an artistic environment characterised by cohesion, solidarity and mutual support. 

Before the feminist artist collective Grenzfrauen (Border Women) was born, an earlier more pivotal moment happened: her “Grenzzustände” (Border Conditions) exhibition received the City of Aachen’s advancement award in 1985. The drawings presented there addressed borders in various respects – territorial, mental, emotional, and existential. Experiences of crossing the border, arrival and departure, ongoing longing, as well as tension and frustration were consolidated into a series of large-format, monochrome drawings. A group of 16 artists began to form around this exhibition, adopting the name Grenzfrauen a little later. It is hard to imagine a more fitting honour.

As often happens in life, family circumstances intervened in career development. Due to Irek Kulik’s job and his pedagogical work the couple moved to Düsseldorf. Wróbel-Kulik studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Professor Günther Uecker from 1984 to 1985. Shortly after, in 1986, her daughter Miriam was born. From this point onwards Wróbel-Kulik consciously followed a principle that remains the guiding theme of her work to this day: Nulla dies sine linea – for her this means not letting a day go by without artistic activity. In the morning she would take her daughter to nursery and then go to the studio. For years she maintained close connections with Aachen, until her artistic path permanently connected her to Düsseldorf when she moved into a studio in the Salzmannbau building there.

The work of Wróbel-Kulik is both extremely autobiographical and ecological. Recurring themes include rivers, borders, gardens as a metaphor for the world and “special places” the artist defines as special. Her work addresses space, the possibilities of its depiction, the identity of places and their symbolism. Nature and biography are inseparably intertwined. Mushrooms, linked to the tragic death of her grandmother who died from mushroom poisoning, are a common theme. At the same time, the mushrooms represent a return to childhood and the relationship with Wróbel-Kulik’s father, who introduced her to the world of forest and meadow plants, to their symbolism and practical use – from the dandelion to herbal remedies. In technical terms she primarily works with layering processes and fine overlays of paper, wax, acid, paint and other materials. Using this collage technique gives rise to multi-layer structures and spatial depth. Wróbel-Kulik is by no means defined exclusively by two-dimensionality. She produces art books, installations and spherical objects. Her work often enters the third dimension and brings movement into play. 

Motherhood was a decisive turning point – even though the artist emphasises that while this did not immediately change her work it did indeed transform it in the long term. The piece “Bibliothek für Miriam” (Library for Miriam), an explosion of colour and material, serves as a metaphor for the most wonderful thing that we can pass onto a child: knowledge, memory and experience. As a result, imaginativeness, playful discovery of the world and experimentation increasingly gained significance for Wróbel-Kulik – not only in regard to techniques but also materials. In the early years this was partially due to limited financial means: Numerous works were thus made from found supporting materials – paper rolls, sample boards, wallpaper catalogues, and later on old maps that the artist wrote over with a new personal meaning. What came from necessity became her signature.

In her work Brygida Wróbel-Kulik weaves intimacy and universality, personal experiences and collective memories into a fine tapestry. Direct and spontaneous artistic gestures are characteristic of these “notes on experience”: A thought is quickly recorded, artistically transformed into a suitable medium and immediately given its own mood, a presence between head and heart.

 

Katarzyna Schieweck, March 2026