Eugeniusz Józefowski. Dreamlike sensitivty concealed in color

"I create the ideation that life is a fairy tale. A fairy tale that we create ourselves. Reality is an illusion because we define its form. I am a warrior for my own cause, I make art so that I can go through life and not become insane." Eugeniusz Józefowski

Since the very beginning of his creative path, Eugeniusz Józefowski, a professor of visual arts at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, drawing was his main tool for recording experiences. Drawings, prints, and paintings are dominated by a narrative based on synthetic, unreal shapes, liberated from the necessity to depict nature objectively. Thus, the artist's works are characterized by a strong emotional charge and a personal dimension. They reveal the sensitivity and emotional abundance that constitute the subjective (internal) reality of Józefowski. The simplified form, devoid of unnecessary details, is the carrier of the meanings and ideas contained in it. As Janina Florczykiewicz observes: 

"Visuality, being a space for shaping meanings that cannot be reduced to verbal language, allows the recipient to experience only a silent presence of a general sense embedded in it, while the proper meaning remains to be concealed."

(Janina Florczykiewicz, Życie jest bajką, czyli zaklinanie rzeczywistości [in:] J. Florczykiewicz, Chwile uważności Eugeniusza Józefowskiego, Wrocław 2016, p. 7). 

In Józefowski's works, we see a repeated motif of a grid, which allows for achieving a unique balance between color and rhythm. This theme is an important, almost obsessive, distinguishing feature of the artist's works, taking over the order of compositions in his numerous paintings, drawings, and photographs. An important role in Józefowski's work is also played by artistic books and his fascination with literature. Through the illusory reality in the artist's works, the viewer is introduced to the fairy-tale atmosphere from the borderline of children's imagination.

"After moving to Wrocław, I was able to paint only when I acquired a nine-meter TV antenna amplifier room. Painting commentaries on the social life of that time, for example, Checked Particularism Two Eggs and a Few Earthworms is simply a kind of joke for those with a peculiar sense of humor (and this is the biggest problem). Moreover, the creator used a figure of a clown wearing a checked costume in the stories about himself. This does not affect the gravity of his artistic output, which was well-received among a serious public, from the avant-garde to the enthusiasts of realism. "

Eugeniusz Józefowski

At the end of the seventies, Józefowski became familiar with Jung's ideas, which was particularly important to the artist and led him to the assumption that paintings are crucial elements in determining attitudes towards oneself and reality. Tantric art, which reexamined the existing history of art, was another significant source of inspiration for the artist. During this period, Józefowski distanced himself from the idea of "colonizing" the world as a positive value. The artist's creative process was constantly accompanied by a sense of being on the margins, reflecting his state of loneliness in the surrounding reality. In the years 1978-2015, creative tutorials conducted by the artist were an important area of Józefowski's interests, which allowed him to develop his own concepts. In his academic practice, he dealt with art education, education through art, and art therapy.