(The text was published in exhibition catalogue: The Elements, National Gallery of Art, Łódź 1993)

Water… at the beginning of life

 nourishes and washes

 comes in a dream

caresses the body

captivates and embraces

in ecstasy lifts towards

the limits

The „Raft” appeared among my works at the end of the 1960s when a small pail with the inscription “Around the table voyage across seas and oceans” floated to my shore.

It was followed by other works with water in their titles, which exploit-ed whole meanders of forms that brought to mind various shapes of aquatic ephemerality.

There were waves – in such works as „Venus from Sea Foam”, the “Returning Wave” or „Maiden on a Wave”.

There were different sources of water such as the “Well of Pink” with a 10 meter-long stretch of quilted fabric pulled out from a well with a turning handle annexing all space. The “Brook” is a long pink roll – a trickle flowing out of a wooden trough and winding through the rocks.

My water is always pink. It is difficult to justify this fact but it would be somehow wrong for it to turn blue. After all, the colour pink has become the Sign. It is there.

The composition „Stone in Water” depicts a small pond with a rippling surface. A stone is lying on the sandy bank and only the circles of the water show that it supposedly dropped.

There is also the „Sunset on a Lake”. A quiet and nostalgia-filled work. an atmosphere of a storm with only a black flag and a small wave spreading out from the spot where the pole is sunk into the water. What has happened here? – we ask. Only the date could give us a clue.

The „Wounded Boat” glides by and “My Bed on an Island”, awashed with pink water, stands all alone. Water tempts, water calms and awakes passions. It also terrifies and annihilates.

Translated by Aleksandra Rudzińska-Chojnowska