Jan Berdyszak (15 June 1934 –18 September 2014) was a

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

artist. From 1952 to 1958, he studied at the Sculpture Department of the State College of Fine Arts in

Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint Joh ...

(now Fine Arts Academy), where he eventually returned as a lecturer. He participated in numerous exhibitions both in Poland and abroad. His works were exhibited in the Foto-Medium-Art Gallery in 1980, 1986, 1995 and 2007. In honor of his merits for culture he was appointed a Knight of Polonia Restituta Order in 1988 and an Officer of Polonia Restituta in 2001. He also received the Doctorate Honoris Causa of Fine Arts Academy in Bratislava in 1999.

Projects

Berdyszak's artistic projects cover a wide range of fields and techniques, including graphic design,

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

, installations,

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employe ...

, and stage designs for theatre performances. His art is frequently analytical and academic, and he frequently deliberates on variations of a particular problem, sometimes bringing threads from past projects into subsequent ones. A number of Berdyszak's works concentrate on the issue of space, which he defined as "the original being, and also density, darkness, void, transparency and potentiality." He later focused on notions of sacrum,

space-time continuum In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize relativistic effects, such as why differ ...

and infinity. His sculpture projects and stage designs frequently reflect on light, words, and movement.

Works

The artist's works have been purchased by museums and private collections including the National Museums in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

, Cracow,

Wrocław Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...

; Art Museum in Łódź, Staatliches Museum in Berlin, UNESCO Collection in Paris, The

Kosciuszko Foundation The Kosciuszko Foundation is a charitable foundation based in New York City. It was created by Stephen Mizwa to fund programs that promote Polish-American intellectual and artistic exchange. History The Polish American Scholarship Committee wa ...

in New York,

Boston Museum of Fine Art The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

List of selected works

* ''Double Circles'', 1962–64 * ''Compositions of Circles'', 1963 * ''Structural Painting with an OpeningIII'', 1965 * ''Animated Art'', 1966–1970 * ''Transparent'', 1970–1979 * ''Frames of the East'', 1972 * ''Silence'', 1972–1975 * ''Reserved Seats'', 1973–1976 * ''Infinity'', 1975–1977 * ''Beams of the Cross'', 1977–1988 * ''Fragments as Radical Wholes'', 1982–1984 * ''Others to Bases'', 1982–1984 * ''States of Morality'', 1985–1987 * ''At the Stone'', 1986–1988 * ''Neither Necessity Nor Possibility'', 1987–1995 * ''Beams'', 1988–2001 * ''Passe-pas-tout'', 1990-2000 * ''Apres Passe-par-tout'', 2000 * ''Photographic Re-Installations'', 1992-? * ''Covers'' and ''Aftercovers'', 1995-?

Photo gallery

File:Fma-jan-berdyszak-dwie przezroczystosci-1991-2006.jpg, Jan Berdyszak, Dwie przezroczystości/Two transparency, 1991-2006 File:Fma-jan-berdyszak-reinstalacja-obrazogenna-1993.jpg, Jan Berdyszak, Reinstalacja obrazogenna, 1993 File:Fma-jan-berdyszak-reinstalacja-sytuacyjna-II-1993.jpg, Jan Berdyszak, Reinstalacja sytuacyjna II/Situation Reinstalation II, 1993 File:Fma-j-berdyszak-generator-fot-efem-1.jpg, Jan Berdyszak, Generator fotografii efemerycznych/Generator of Ephemeral Photographs, 2008 File:Fma-j-berdyszak-generator-fot-efem-15.jpg, Jan Berdyszak, Generator fotografii efemerycznych/Generator of Ephemeral Photographs, 2008 File:Fma-j-berdyszak-generator-fot-efem-16.jpg, Jan Berdyszak, Generator fotografii efemerycznych/Generator of Ephemeral Photographs, 2008 File:Fma-radom-rekonstrukcja.jpg, Jan Berdyszak, Rekonstrukcja/Reconstruction, 1995

Bibliography

*''Now! Artists of Foto-Medium-Art Gallery'', Mazowieckie Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej „Elektrownia” w Radomiu, Radom 2008.

References

External links

Profile of Jan Berdyszak
at Culture.pl

- biography and graphics of the artist: Galeria Muzalewska {{DEFAULTSORT:Berdyszak, Jan 1934 births 2014 deaths Academic staff of the University of Fine Arts in Poznań