ISBN MNK: 978-83-7581-097-4
ISBN FAW: 978-83-935822-0-4
format: 29×24 cm
soft cover
48 pages, colour
on Munken Lynx paper
publishers: National Museum in Kraków / Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation

concept and editing: Magdalena Ziółkowska, Wojciech Grzybała
leading editor: Krystyna Stefaniak
translation and editorial assistance: Krzysztof Kościuczuk
English copy-editing: Elizaveta Butakova
graphic design: Joanna Jopkiewicz, Łukasz Paluch / AnoMalia Studio

“In my practice, I need to preserve – and first seize – a royal generality, and all-encompassing- cognoscibility; in it I need to encompass everything, that which I have experienced, and a great deal of what I only know (from books, stories), and, finally, even more of that which I don’t know, but which has to be inside of me, because I’m a son, a Pole, an intellectual, a frequent friend, a passer-by, a consoler. However, what I need here is to take well-considered action, subjected to discipline, which would guarantee me an adequate amount of nourishment. I know that by diminishing the influx of sensations, reducing contacts, I heighten my sensitivity” – wrote Andrzej Wróblewski at the beginning of 1948.

This collection of daily notes written by hand over January, February and March 1948 offers an insight into the exploration of the rules that govern art undertaken by the then almost twenty-one year old Andrzej Wróblewski. Passages discussing the role of the artist are interwoven with digressions on recently read books (such as Jules Romains’ Men of Good Will), critical remarks about colleagues at the academy and observations of the everyday. With an output of several dozen woodcuts, still lifes, and traditional studies of models from the Kraków Academy, Wróblewski embarked on an attempt at self-scrutiny, seeing the inseparable nature of art and life as contrary to one’s need for an artistic regime. He dreamed of a “creative vitality”, of adopting a discipline that would allow him to “create definitively convincing paintings, beyond time and space, which, at the same time, would constitute the essential and sufficient content (…) of [one’s own] life and a foothold for taking on the whole world”.

Fot. Peter Kreibich