The artist studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where in 1983 he received a diploma with distinction in the painting studio of Stefan Gierowski. In the same year, he became the youngest member of the Gruppa artistic formation. Until 1989, the artist had been creating figurative paintings, often with historical and patriotic references. In the early 1990s, Kowalewski made a series of collages in which he focused on the aesthetics of everyday life, under meaningful titles: "Exercises in the Aesthetics in which I Grew up", "Marker Points that are Necessary to Avoid Madness".