Polish avant garde artist Włodzimierz Borowski

“Włodzimierz Borowski was one of the artists whose work reflects the major changes in Polish avant-garde art from the 1950s until the end of the 1970s. He was born in 1930 in Kurów in Lubelszczyzna, and died on December 31st 2008 in Warsaw. Between 1956 and 1959 he studied art history at the Catholic University in Lublin, where — even during the times of Stalinist propaganda — some philosophical freedom persisted.
During the ‘thaw’ period after 1956, he was a student of Jacek Woźniakowski, who was one of the first professors to organise lectures about contemporary international art. Influenced by these lectures, Borowski with some of his friends decided to pursue some activities leading to the self-education and animation of Lublin’s cultural milieu, fighting — as Piotr Majewski wrote — its inferiority complex. This initiative resulted in the creation of the Zamek group, which not only rose to fame among Polish modernists but also among the milieu of the Parisian Phases movement, joining late informal painting with the original concept of ‘structural art’. The group’s work is still highly regarded by art critics today. Among the group’s members were the unjustly unappreciated Tytus Dzieduszycki (who later moved to France) and Jan Ziemski (who remained in Lublin and strengthened his position as one of the most interesting local artists). Apart from them, young art critics also took part in the group. Some of them, like Wiesław Borowski, Urszula Czartoryska, Jerzy Ludwiński, and Hanna Ptaszkowska, later turned out to be great organizers of artistic life in different venues. It’s thanks to them that the magazine Struktury (Structures) was established as an addition to the literary Kamena, and 11 issues were published between 1959 and 1961. Borowski himself, after graduating and leaving Lublin, worked for Warsaw galleries Foksal and Repassage, and years later also for the Labirynt and Labirynt 2 galleries in Lublin.”…………..More