Włodzimierz Jan Zakrzewski (born 1946 in Łódź), painter, graphic artist and creator of installations, is an artist who moves fluidly between abstraction and figuration. From 1964 to 1970, he studied at the Faculty of Painting and Graphics of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, in the studios of, among others, Roman Owidzki, Juliusz Studnicki, Halina Chrostowska and Daniel Szczechura. In 1981, he left Poland and settled in the USA. From 1990, he divided his time between New York and Warsaw, and has lived and worked in Warsaw since 2001. The changes in the place of his life and artistic activity, like his roots, were directly reflected in his work. Zakrzewski comes from an artistic family – his father, Włodzimierz Zakrzewski, was a well-known painter and poster designer, and his mother, Elżbieta Owsepian-Zakrzewska, was a painter. His father's heritage inspired the autobiographical themes in Włodzimierz Jan Zakrzewski's art, while his mother's Armenian origin prompted his search for identity and awakened his interest in geopolitical and historical themes, including their impact on human fate. Zakrzewski's art thus deals with both universal and very personal issues. Another source of the themes the artist explores in his works has been his growing interest in history. Around the year 2000, Włodzimierz Jan Zakrzewski began creating installations using sound. In 2000, as part of the "Polonia–Polonia" exhibition at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, the installation "Colours of Poland" was created, in which the artist comments on the history of our country. The artist's reflections on Polish history continued with the 'Polonia–Germania' project. The drawing "1939-2001 (Jedwabne), No. 3" (MPOLIN-M1320), heralding the artist's emerging need to delve into the history of Polish Jews, stems from this area of interest. Between 2003 and 2005, Zakrzewski worked on a large-scale installation "After Image", referring to the thousand-year history of Jews in Polish lands. Other works from the POLIN Museum's collection also deal with this theme: those belonging to the '"Afterimages" series (MPOLIN-M1105 and MPOLIN-M1106) and the video object "Sotto Voce" (MPOLIN-M1107).
Małgorzata Bogdańska-Krzyżanek
