Andrew Fogtt, SITTING ACT, 2002

99,0 x 70,0cm - pastel, collage, cardboard

signed in pastel p. d.: Fogtt 2002

Andrzej Fogtt (Poznan 1950, lives in Warsaw) - studied at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznan under Prof. Zdzislaw Kepinski and Magdalena Abakanowicz. He received his diploma in 1974 and participated in exhibitions since the mid-1970s. In 1984 he won the Grand Prix at the Festival of Polish Contemporary Painting in Szczecin. That year he represented Poland at the XLI Venice Biennale. There he showed a work co-signed with Bożenna Biskupska - the environment "Mystery of Time," composed of his 14 monumental painting compositions and 30 equally powerful sculptures by Biskupska. They were set in a composition with a scenographic character, intended to allude to the sacred on the one hand (but without elements of Christian iconography), on the other - to evoke the mythical and heroic history of battles and sacrifices. The style of Fogtt's paintings at this peak of his career was based on the contrast of centrally located, hieratic silhouettes and the fine, shimmering "scales" of brushstrokes that build them up. A similar style persists in the artist's later works. In a series of works entitled. "Energy Space" he used paint mixed with metal filings, which he subjected to the forces of a magnetic field during the painting process. This resulted in multiple effects, mainly textural. Since 1989, the artist has been working on a project for the Tower of European Unity in Warsaw - a building intended to play as much a symbolic role as to be a cultural center with exhibition halls, concert halls, studios, etc. In 1992 a model of it was created. After 2000, the artist paints bright, colorful, "classical" nudes and scenes in the landscape, with shapes distinguished by color or outline, obscured by a kind of raster of small irregular spots and streaks.

In the series of landscapes, created after 2010 on the painter's canvases, one notices mainly a stretched landscape. However, Andrew Fogtt goes further - he tries to capture and render the depth of energy, the source of which is nature. The paintings are created in direct contact with nature, Andrzej Fogtt creates on the Brda River in Bory Tucholskie on the Bug River near Janow Podlaski. As he says himself, "I have been experiencing in recent years a fascination with the element of water, it is a mirror reflecting the surrounding nature. I sketch on the river, photographing given fragments of the landscape. This record allows in the studio to preserve the energy experienced directly in the landscape, allows me to keep the power to create many paintings." The series of landscapes was presented at the gallery of the Agra Art Auction House during the exhibition "Water for My Mill."