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Jan Kucz

(born June 10, 1936 in Zarzecze). In 1961, he graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1982 he represented Poland at the Venice Biennale, in 1992–2002 he was a member of the Artistic Council of the Center of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. He was a lecturer at the painting studio at the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw.

Jan Kucz is one of the most eminent representatives of the new realism in Polish sculpture. As a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, he shaped the masses of sculptors.

Answering the question about monumental sculpture – one of the most important areas of his creative activity – Jan Kucz said: “There are many reasons. One of them is the sense of participation in building life, responsibility for the state of culture and humanism (…). It is a readiness to make an effort, to come out of our own hermetic visions, ambitions explained by law, and the duty of a sincere artist. To take from the levels of “left” people who are unconsciously distancing themselves from art and culture in their unpreparedness. The monument is to be a form of effective dialogue with them without grossly detriment to the quality of this meeting.

These spaces of dialogue created by the artist are scattered all over the country. To mention Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński kneeling on the Częstochowa meadows, looking at Jan Kochanowski’s Sandomierz Palace in Radom, or the dignified Cyryl Ratajski from Poznań’s Anders Square. These are only three out of a dozen or so monumental monumental projects that have remained an integral part of the landscape of Polish cities for decades.

Professor Kucz’s works have been staged, among others in The Hague, Madrid, Lisbon and Paris. In 1982, the artist represented Poland at the Venice Biennale.

The space of artistic expression by Jan Kucz is a harmonious marriage of workshop mastery and the substrate of philosophical reflection:

“Art is a constant hope, a promise. It is a longing for a higher state of what the logic of earthly attraction brings. (…) does not want to be captured by human intelligence. Rather, it is the result of the artist’s constant struggle between wanting and being able, between I think and I know. (…) Art that realizes its ambitions of shaping human existence, cultural and humanistic, cannot carelessly for the immediate needs of the moment, have an arrogant attitude towards the past and to act without concern for the expression and shape of human tomorrow. In its activities, art should reveal moral sensitivity among the many features that create it. ”

For years, the artist conducted didactic and pedagogical activity: “As long as I am a student of my student, I am young and I climb up” – he writes. Since 1989, he has been a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and in the years 1984-1986 he was its vice-rector.