Mariusz Kruk - Artists · EGO Gallery

Biography Born in 1952. Studied at the National Art School in Poznań, graduated and obtained a diploma in 1982 in the painting atelier of Jerzy Kałucki. Involved with his alma mater for many years, as an academic teacher he continued the traditions of Avant-garde and conceptualism represented by the ateliers of Jarosław Kozłowski and Jerzy Kalucki.
Kruk was the co-founder (together with Piotr Kurka) of the 1983 Koło Klipsa, members of which also were: Leszek Knaflewski, Wojciech Kujawski i Krzysztof Markowski. The group was an example of artists who tried to find a free space for themselves in the area of art, somewhere out of the mainstream such as neo-Avant-guard, church art, academic traditions and works subject to national ideology. During the group’s period of activity, Kruk became famous as a creator of spatial objects. The artist created them mainly from common organic everyday items. Simultaneously he also created paintings, drawings, pastels and poetry. After leaving the group in 1987 he started to work individually. Between the eighties and nineties installations created from stacked, multiplied pieces of furniture placed by the artist against common sense, began to appear in his works. The works presented at numerous local and foreign exhibitions brought the creator international acclaim. Particularly important was the individual exposition at the Centre of Contemporary Art in 1991 („Nie-pokoje”), as well as participation in Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992. After going to France in 1994 Kruk stopped creating installations, instead returning to traditional forms of artistic expression: paintings, pastels, water-colors. The dominant theme in the artist’s work was, from that moment, a landscape with fairytale poetics. There are also ornaments combined with fantasy animal and plant forms present in his newest works. In 2002 Mariusz Kruk came back to Poland, he lives and works in Poznań.