Aleksander Żywiecki

"realistic painting in particular. Zywiecki; or considerable courage. We need add solitude (whatever happens "in opposition to" in fine art, most often doesn't recognise crowds or groups). But after all it is our support in well hidden longing for emotion, naturalness, truth and mystery. Mystery does not have to mean cascading manner and theoretical and conceptual hokus-pokus. Its reflection — which enables encounter and entry into the depth — examines itself especially nowadays in the dense matter of "the low". In the particles and glimmer of the real. In what whispers, and sometimes cries out to us: clouds and walls, wet soil and arid sand's breath which pulses in fissures of bark and cracks of flesh. Zywiecki risked going back. That means he did not set off in search of a new language (the word "new" seems to be an identifier of intellectual kitsch and self-advertising deception of). Instead he took a close look at the Polish tradition of landscape painting from the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. (...) The bend of a river in one of the paintings emanated reality (REALITY) . As did the bliss of cumuli over a field. Or the twilight of autumn air. In other words, reality was unreal in these paintings, innumerable in the serious, unhurried sense of things that matter, authen-tic things"

In July 2012 Aleksander Żywiecki initiated the 4 Landscapes group, which included: Aleksander Żywiecki, Andrzej Kacperek, Paweł Kotwicz and Jan Wołek. Aleksander Żywiecki was the co-author of the group's manifesto stating that an important aim of the group 4 Landscapes is to stop the monopoly of the art promoted by the 21st century Academia and to pave way for all contemporary tendencies in painting, including those whose objective is to give aesthetic pleasure ad arouse emotions.

Aleksander Żywiecki is a plein air artist. He participated in plein air sessions in Poland in such places as the Biebrza Valley, Kraków-Częstochowa Upland, Polesie, the Białowieża Forest and Ujście Warty National Park. In the years 2008 and 2009 he traveled several times to the Ukraine to the regions of the former Kresy (Eastern Borderlands). At that period he made multiple drawings and oil paintings presenting the Dniestr landscape. Among the paintings created at that time is “The Dniestr at Mariampol at Dusk”, which is one of the most prominent works in the output of that artist.

Śląski malarz-pejzażysta i jego mecenasi", in: Górnośląski Informator Kulturalny, No. 2, March, 2001, http://katalog.czasopism.pl/index.php/GIK_-_G%C3%B3rno%C5%9Bl%C4%85ski_Informator_Kulturalny_2_(2)_2001

Author of over 30 individual exhibitions in Poland, of which the most important include: exhibition in the gallery Arkada, Wrocław, 1997, cyclical exhibitions in the gallery Kocioł Artystyczny, Cracow (1997, 1999, 2002, 2006), exhibition in Galeria Sztuki Chorzów 2007, retrospective exhibition in Silesian Museum in Katowice (1999), exhibition in the Polish Radio Katowice (Na Żywo, Katowice, 2003), retrospective exhibition in the gallery Panorama (Tomaszowice near Cracow, 2010) and an exhibition in Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej, Kołobrzeg 2013.

As a student Aleksander Żywiecki contributed to numerous exhibitions and art competitions, including the Tenth All-Polish Students Graphic Competition and the Second All-Polish Students New Different Book Exhibition, Poznań, where he won awards. After graduation he was invited by owners of European and world galleries; he presented his works in Germany (the post-plein air exhibition in Sahlmule, 1993), in Belgium (Gallery Centre Culturel Jean Degous, Beloeil, Belgium 2001) and in the USA (Anya Tish Gallery, Houston, USA 2000)

In the early 1990s he focussed on nature which since that time became the sole theme of his painting. Simultaneously he gave up formal experiments and decided to paint landscape applying the traditional artistic techniques.

In the 1980s, in the early period of his career, the artist used to create abstract postmodern art and to experiment with the modern media and atypical materials. But, as Jerzy Madeyski reports, the young painter „soon noticed that abstract art can only render the most general impressions and feelings, and that wasn’t enough for him. Abstract art started to be boring and palled on him.”

Aleksander Żywiecki was born In Katowice. In the years 1977-82 he attended the Specialist Art Secondary School in Katowice. Then he studied in the Faculty of Graphics at the Katowice branch of the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts (1982–88), under the direction of Jacek Rykała for painting and drawing, Adam Romaniuk for Graphical Design, and Stanisław Gawron in Graphics, which he presented in his Diploma project.

Aleksander Żywiecki (born 15 July 1962) is a Polish painter specializing in realist landscape painting