Work
The work of Tadeusz Żak is an extraordinary phenomenon in the landscape of contemporary Polish folk art. Among collectors, experts and critics who for many years visited the artist’s modest studio in Łazy near Kielce, Żak – a painter and sculptor – was regarded as one of Poland’s most outstanding naïve artists.
The recognition and appreciation he received for his many years of artistic work were reflected not only in the prestigious prizes and distinctions he received at competitions organised throughout Poland. Żak’s early sculptures and later paintings, characterised by a rich imagination and a distinctive, recognisable style, found their way into numerous European galleries, including those in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and France. Conversations with the artist also revealed that his works had reached collectors in Canada, the United States and even as far away as Japan.
The work of Tadeusz Żak is represented in the collections of major Polish ethnographic museums, including those in Warsaw, Kraków, Toruń, Radom and Płock. His most interesting early paintings, dating from the 1980s, are held by the National Museum in Kielce.
The Museum of Kielce Countryside has comparatively few works by the artist in its collection. In 2015, thanks to funding obtained from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Museum had the opportunity to acquire 55 oil paintings dating from the final years of the artist’s life. They document a late period of Tadeusz Żak’s artistic career that is poorly represented in Polish collections and preceded the painter’s death on 24 September 1998.
The Museum of Kielce Countryside thus became the owner of a collection of his “last paintings”, some of which were executed hastily and without the precision characteristic of his earlier work, yet marked by a distinctive multiplication of details and figures.
According to Maria Żak, the artist’s daughter, despite his progressing illness, her father retained a powerful artistic need – almost a compulsion – to paint every day until the final days of his life. His persistent return to his beloved “Talens” paints, “in health and in sickness”, regardless of the circumstances, perfectly illustrated the attitude to life described by Barbara Katarzyna Erber, an expert in folk art. She wrote:
“...Tadeusz Żak has a passion that gives his life meaning and purpose. It is his painting and sculpture...”
May this exhibition, consisting of the artist’s final paintings, created and preserved in his studio, stand as a testament to that passion.
Early Years
The origins of Tadeusz Żak’s interest in artistic creation can be traced back to the future painter’s childhood. The artist was born on 25 June 1925 in Gruchawka, near Kielce. He spent his entire childhood there, gaining the knowledge of rural life that would later become evident in many of his works.
In interviews and conversations with journalists, Tadeusz Żak always emphasised the enormous influence his grandfather had on the development of his imagination and artistic sensitivity. Grazing a cow together, trips to the forest to pick mushrooms and the many hours he spent observing the older man left a lasting impression on him. It was Tadeusz Żak’s grandfather who, carving small birds, figurines and toys for his grandson from wood, bark and roots, taught him to see in the surrounding natural world shapes and forms invisible to others – shapes that would later become sculptures. As a young child, Żak also tried his hand at carving walking sticks.
As was the case with many outstanding folk artists, artistic creation entered his life relatively late. The need to start working at an early age at the Ludwików Steelworks in Kielce, followed by military service and then employment at the Woodworks Factory, postponed his artistic beginnings for many years.
In the 1950s, Tadeusz Żak met his future wife, Irena. After their marriage in 1951, they moved into a small wooden house “in Łazy” near Kielce, which still stands today. The early years of their life together were marked by hard physical work at the Chemar plant in Kielce and the responsibility of supporting and raising their four young children.
In the early 1970s, the hardworking machine fitter from Department W1 recalled the moments he had spent with his grandfather and began experimenting with juniper roots. With great precision, he used them to make candlesticks, candelabras and chandeliers. This “root art”, which brought him a modest income, encouraged Tadeusz Żak to make a more serious attempt at sculpture, resulting in his first work, entitled Crying Man.
The beginning of his consciously pursued artistic career can symbolically be marked by the establishment of his personal “Chronicle”, dated “August 1975”, coinciding with the opening of his solo exhibition at the Chemar plant in Kielce. The artist had achieved his first success two years earlier, in 1973, when he received first prize in a regional souvenir-making competition.
Over the course of several years, Tadeusz Żak underwent an unexpectedly rapid artistic development, progressing from his first souvenir works, known by their audiences as “Inkas”, to sculptures characterised by a distinctly folk aesthetic. His continuous refinement of sculptural form and his approach to shaping the mass of the work led him to develop his own distinctive and recognisable style, as well as to numerous successes.
He also passed his passion on to his two sons, Marek and Mirosław, who likewise became involved in wood carving. In the following years, the range and scope of his subject matter continued to expand, encompassing folk customs and rituals, patron saints and Passion motifs.
One of the most interesting and characteristic forms in Tadeusz Żak’s work were the so-called pałuby – polychrome multi-figure compositions developed along the arch of a log split lengthwise. According to many specialists, his skilful use of colour gave these works a highly painterly quality.
Years of experimenting with colouring his sculptures, using wood stain, gold leaf and poster paints, revealed an unexpected talent in Tadeusz Żak, which came to the fore dramatically while he was working on the monumental wooden Last Supper, commissioned by filmmakers from Warsaw.
He described the moment of creative frustration and anger that led him towards painting around 1980 as follows:
“...I took a log for the sculpture and roughly carved the subject, but within a week it had cracked so badly that I chopped it up with an axe, and my son used the pieces to make smaller sculptures. I thought then that perhaps this subject would be better expressed on canvas. If I can paint sculptures, I can paint on canvas too. That is why my first painting was The Last Supper. I would like to create subjects that no one has done before. I cannot stand still, because something always has to change...”
Tadeusz Żak adapted his new artistic passion to an original philosophy of painting that he developed for his own purposes, painting, as he himself put it, exclusively “from imagination and from the mind”. The artist was also proud of having independently discovered and explored painting techniques, sometimes causing considerable bewilderment among professionally trained artists.
From the very beginning of his new artistic pursuit, Tadeusz Żak emphasised in interviews the important role of intuition and compositional ideas introduced spontaneously during the painting process. In an interview with journalists from the Kielce daily Echo Dnia, when asked about his creative process, the artist admitted:
“...sculpture is easier to make, while painting is more difficult. With paintings, you have to concentrate more, put more into it […]. When I feel like it, I sit down and start painting straight away. I take a brush, draw the frames, then the blue sky and the green. Against this background, I immediately paint houses, people and animals with the brush. I paint straight away, without making sketches...”
Later Years
Tadeusz Żak first came to the attention of admirers and experts in contemporary folk art as a painter at the annual post-competition exhibition of Contemporary Folk Sacred Art in 1980, organised by the PAX Association. The artist’s debut, marked by enthusiastic public reception and an honourable mention, was followed that same year by a successful participation in the 3rd Triennial of Amateur Art in Wrocław.
Further confirmation that Tadeusz Żak had chosen the right direction for the development of his artistic work came with the recognition his paintings received from the jury of the following competition organised by the Kielce branch of PAX. The painter from Łazy was awarded the prestigious first prize.
Tadeusz Żak’s painting from this period revealed characteristics typical of naïve art in its approach to painting, while at the same time bearing the imprint of more than a decade of earlier experience in folk sculpture. The way figures were depicted, the colour schemes and attempts to give greater dynamism to the scenes demonstrated great sensitivity, talent and, above all, the artist’s immense reserves of uninhibited imagination.
The painter also became aware that what he called painting “with his heart” was appreciated, and that awards and praise provided a strong impulse for further work. He also developed a sense of his own worth and artistic individuality in relation to the work of other recognised artists.
In his studio, Tadeusz Żak sometimes listened to well-intentioned suggestions from collectors, ethnographers and critics, who proposed improvements to his painting techniques or suggested new subject matter. Most often, however, as an individualist, he remained faithful to his own ideas, emphasising this firmly in the words:
“...No one can explain anything to me, because I paint something different, and I have to work out for myself how to paint....”
His new field of artistic activity allowed the artist to explore many subjects he had previously been unable to realise, depicting scenes of everyday life, agricultural work, family and annual rituals, and the traditional life of the countryside.
Painting also introduced a different rhythm and new habits into his life and work, which sometimes surprised and embarrassed even the artist himself. He expressed these feelings in a short statement “about himself”, recorded and published in one of the exhibition catalogues. The artist remarked with surprise:
“...But how is it that I only paint in winter, even though summer offers better conditions for painting, because I could take a large canvas outside and paint. In summer, I can only sculpt...”
From the very beginning of his career as a painter, Tadeusz Żak sought to discover his own techniques for painting on canvas. This sometimes resulted in the unusual colour schemes characteristic of his early works. He was reluctant to reveal the secrets of his technique. Some of them are known thanks to conversations and interviews conducted by ethnographers and journalists who visited him.
His first paintings were created using rather unusual artistic materials, such as poster paints or wood stains mixed with substances of his own invention to modify their properties, including glue and vinegar. Tadeusz Żak was also famous for experimenting with ways of protecting the surfaces of finished works. For example, instead of the recommended varnish, the folk artist sometimes applied Soviet hairspray. This process caused runs in the paint and contributed to faster and unpredictable changes in the colour tones.
None of these methods, however, deprived the artist’s paintings of the cheerful charm characteristic of naïve art. His early works, such as Flight into Egypt, Asking for Bread, Blessed Food beneath the Cross, the famous Last Supper and Paradise, revealed his talent, originality and the intuitive joy that this new field of artistic creation brought to Tadeusz Żak.
The few entries in the very incomplete and rarely used “Chronicle” – a guestbook kept in the painter’s studio in Łazy – testify to the very positive reception of his work by those for whom he created it. In a standardised, mechanised and dehumanised world, a visit to the studio and a successful purchase of one of Tadeusz Żak’s works, as the entries testify, “...brightened the darkness of grey life”.
As the years passed, the artist’s “cheerful paintings of a sad world” acquired brighter and more intense colours thanks to the use of higher-quality professional Dutch oil paints. What remained unchanged, however, were the distinctive painted frames composed of repeated coloured lines and rhythmic diamonds, dots and flowers.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a significant transformation could be observed in the composition of Tadeusz Żak’s paintings. The artist developed a fascination with depicting large numbers of human and animal figures, multiplying the planes and increasing the number of buildings, while breaking details down into ever smaller elements. As a result, his finished works surprised viewers with combinations of multicoloured patches. Viewed from a distance, hanging on a wall, they created the impression of a fairytale-like decorative mosaic.
One of the catalogues accompanying Tadeusz Żak’s solo exhibition in the 1990s recorded a statement by the painter explaining the stylistic changes in his work. The artist said:
“...I see this world as if from an aeroplane or helicopter... The most important thing is that there should be a lot of everything, so that it is dense, because that is how it really is – people and animals and trees and grass...”
In another statement, he described his attitude towards the world he painted from his imagination:
“What’s a landscape? A landscape on its own is easy to make. But I struggle! It is very difficult to paint a seated person, or eighty people, as I do. That is when a painting has value.”
His own subjective criteria for evaluating his work, combined with his growing skill in handling brushes and paints, contributed to the creation of a vast number of works on a wide range of subjects, executed in his new style. Photographs from the 1990s showing the artist inside his studio reveal that almost every wall was completely covered with finished paintings.
This period of intense, almost feverish painting coincided with Tadeusz Żak receiving prestigious awards and distinctions. He had been a member of the Association of Folk Artists since 1977. Few admirers of his work, however, knew that Tadeusz Żak also held a certificate confirming his professional status as a visual artist, issued by the Ministry of Culture and Art on 29 November 1989.
Among the most valuable and highly regarded distinctions in the eyes of the folk artist was the Oskar Kolberg Award, which he received in 1993. In 1984, the sculptor and folk painter from Łazy was honoured with a prestigious Honorary Diploma from the Ministry of Culture and Art. Tadeusz Żak also received numerous awards and distinctions in the Folk Sacred Art competitions organised annually by the Kielce Voivodeship branch of the PAX Association.
The freshness, simplicity and disarming sincerity with which he depicted the traditional life of the countryside brought the artist recognition among both critics and audiences.
Scholars and collectors attempted to classify Tadeusz Żak’s work within one of the established categories of art. For many, his approach to painting placed him among naïve artists; others readily saw him as part of contemporary folk painting, creating idyllic images of the countryside from his childhood memories.
Conservative estimates suggest that over the years Tadeusz Żak participated in more than 150 exhibitions. It is impossible to list them all or reproduce in full the long list of awards and distinctions he received in national competitions. His paintings and sculptures were exhibited in renowned galleries and museums, as well as at art fairs and competitions.
In the second half of the 1990s, specialists in “high art” from the Association of Art Historians in Kraków even decided to present an exhibition of Tadeusz Żak’s works (March 1995) as part of their own exhibition programme.
Another expression of recognition for the painter’s artistic achievements was the presentation of his works in the exhibition Polish Naïve Artists. My Vision of the World..., organised in Wrocław to mark the 100th anniversary of the Polish Ethnological Society, with the participation of the Governor of Wrocław Voivodeship and the CEPELIA Foundation.
During this period, significant changes took place in the artist’s life. His inability to complete the two-storey house he had been building for years, financial difficulties and deteriorating health considerably weakened the creative potential of the painter from Łazy.
His increasingly poor eyesight, growing fatigue and haste, combined with his undiminished desire and passion for painting, became evident in the works from this period. Inaccuracies and imperfections in the application of paint, the increasing miniaturisation of figures and the fragmentation of repeated landscape elements and details gave Tadeusz Żak’s painting a new dimension.
These “Last Paintings”, reluctantly shown by the artist, overlooked and set aside by buyers or hidden deep in the studio, became the final tangible testimony to the late period of his artistic career.
Museum collections generally contain selected works for financial and curatorial reasons – the best and most representative works by a given artist. Yet every artistic practice awakened in the soul of a folk artist has its modest beginnings, moments of inspiration, dynamic development and, eventually, a decline – a stage that has very rarely found its way into ethnographic museum collections.
Legacy
In 2015, the Museum of Kielce Countryside decided to prepare a programme to obtain funding towards the purchase of the aforementioned collection of “last paintings” preserved in Tadeusz Żak’s studio. We decided to acquire the artist’s legacy and present works that were often unsigned and undated, yet nevertheless revealed the master’s distinctive hand, as well as his passion and joy of creating.
Some of the works clearly bore the marks of a gradual decline in his creative abilities caused by age and advancing illness. Some of the 55 paintings acquired may come as a surprise to visitors, both in terms of their subject matter and their approach to painting. Others revisit familiar themes.
Imperfections and barely discernible details inadvertently gave some of Tadeusz Żak’s later works an expressive quality associated with the ars insita tradition – art that remains unformed and outside established artistic conventions.
The artist’s death at the age of 73 brought to an end the passion that had given meaning and purpose to his life.
In Łazy, where he lived and worked, it seems as though time has stood still. Since 1998, the painter’s studio has remained almost unchanged, as has the house that was unfinished during his lifetime, the bench where he used to sit and receive guests, and the old sculptures made of Pińczów limestone standing on the lawn beside the well.
The home archive of Maria, Tadeusz Żak’s daughter, contains several dozen photographs of the artist at work, numerous reproductions of his paintings, press clippings, yellowed diplomas and the “Chronicle” containing entries by people who visited his home.
All these “fragments of memory” helped us document and present works illustrating the final period of the artist’s life.
The exhibition, entitled “Because I Paint Something Different... The Paintings of Tadeusz Żak”, will be open to visitors from 15 September 2015 in the room of the 18th-century Presbytery from Goźlice, at the Ethnographic Park in Tokarnia.
It will offer a unique opportunity to experience at close range the art and final paintings of an outstanding folk artist.
The positive emotions evoked by Tadeusz Żak’s optimistic painted worlds are reflected in an anonymous entry left by one of the artist’s visitors in his guestbook three years before his death:
“Mr Tadeusz Żak’s surprisingly wonderful work reveals the great optimism and inspiration of its creator, and this is a source of comfort to us all in the hardships of everyday life.”
Funded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage
Gallery
