Mieczysław
Szewczuk
Art of
individuality
Mieczyslaw
Knut /b. 1953 in Kartuzy/ studied at the Gdansk State Higher School
of Visual Arts /SHSVA/. He graduated in
1977. Today, he lives in Warsaw. For many years, his paintings have
been following roughly the same pattern of composition; differences
between the consecutive works are reduced to the minimum making them
and almost undistinguishable to the eye of an accidental viewer.
However, these differences gain special significance and are
essential to the author, whose creative influence is self-restricted
to move within narrow confines. The artist’s style of painting,
extremely appreciative of the means most subtle – perhaps more
so than any other artist from this book’s lot –
deliberately exposes the very structure of the canvass and builds a
painting’s texture upon it whenever its surface is lit from a
side. On a photographic image of a painting – nearly impossible
to reproduce as it is – this structure seems as if it were a
delicate draft.
In
his earlier paintings, the painter used to contrast the structure of
the canvas with the texture he laid on the canvas’ surface –
now, it seems, he has abandoned that practice. The background
surrounding the central figure of the composition protrudes in
reference to it and colors glow from the deep layers of paint
underlying transparent glazes; pink is – in fact –
extracted out of brown, reflexes of light, afterimages interplay
encouraging a viewer to come closer and examine the surface. His
sensitivity towards the tinted pink, grey on the verge of light blue,
body colors the painter owes to his time in the studio of his tutor
at the Gdansk SHSVA – Wladyslaw Jackiewicz /whose depiction of
bodily parts employs similar scale of colors/.
Although
Mieczyslaw Knut’s art is commonly associated with the geometric
abstraction, the deep source of it lies with the colorists of the
“Sopot school” and their descendants. In her 2005 essay
entitled “Sztuka ciszy i medytacji” /art of silence and
meditation/ Bożena Kowalska wrote: “In his painting the factor
of contemplative beauty has been imbued with the unpronounced
metaphysics and sacrum /…/ Perhaps, it is /…/ the
sacrum of the art itself.”