Bogdan Korczowski was born 29 September 1954 in Krakow, the city with which he still feels emotionally connected. In 1978 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, in prof. Wlodzimierz Kunz's studio. His debut was at a Nowa Ruda festival in 1974 with a performance White Bicycle. In 1980 he moved to Paris where he currently resides and where, in 1985, he graduated from State College of Fine Arts in prof. Abraham Haddad's studio. In 1986 he was presented with the Regional Council of Ile-de-France in Paris award. In 1988 he received Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in New York to where he frequently returned. In 1980 Korczowski began a series of paintings The Letters, where within his canvases, he started to include embellished symbols and ideograms.
In June 1989 a large exhibition Korczowski-Paintings took place in Warsaw's National Gallery of Art Zacheta. It was a proof that despite his debut as a performance artist and general tendency for the contemporary art to experiment with new, cutting edge concepts, Bogdan Korczowski remained faithful to the most traditional art medium: oil painting.
In 1998 Polish Institute in Paris organized artist's retrospective exhibition. So far Korczowski took part in approximately one hundred individual exhibitions in Europe and the USA. In 2004 he participated in Season Polski in France Nova Polska organized by Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
For the last twenty years the artist worked on installation devoted to Tadeusz Kantor entitled Kartonteka. This monumental piece, which since 1990 has been regularly updated, was inspired by Tadeusz Kantor's archive: Cricoteka. The latest version of Kartonteka (20 metres long and 3.5 metres high) was exhibited at Albert Chanot Center of Fine Arts in Clamart near Paris in 2010.
As well as Kartonteka, in 2010, Korczowski presented new series of painting works entitled Fruitée (Fruity).
In recent times the artist also regularly exhibited yet another installation named Fototeka in which he connects his painting style with technique of unique (Polaroid) photographic prints. The work is laid out on a wall like a fresco. In Fototeka the artist introduced the idea of an opposition between the abstract and the figurative, by placing himself half a way between expressionism and introspection.
Recently BWA in Gorzow Wielkopolski (Poland) presented the Three Decades of Painting 1979-2009 exhibition, which included retrospective-personal look at Korczowski's creative work. In 2011 Paul Delouvrier Museum in Evry/Paris opened an exhibition of his latest paintings Orbium Coelestium.

More information at: www.korczowski.com

"A Traveler with no Luggage" by Heloise Hautemaniere (Art critic)

This is a horrifying feeling when one observes that he has been more attracted to the shadow than to the light.

Upon discovering the pictures by Bogdan Korczowski, the first impulse is to reject them in order not to get exposed to danger. Let me invite you for an intriguing, disturbing journey to the dark, tormenting and unsettling world of this artist. The memory has been incorporated and it has been picking up a
spatial dimension on the canvases by Korczowski. The places, memories, images have been becoming alive. It seems that they wish to tell us something. As though they were words that avoid being portrayed, the paint drops are speaking to us in various strange languages, they are inventing magic spells and enchanting us. The pictures look as though they wished to say something exceptionally important. The expression of painting has the strongest effect on me when compared to all other ways of describing the world with the language of other fine arts. In fact, there is no other way out, one should keep silent and watch. This is a winner. The matter of the pictures by Korczowski expresses complex tangles of his memory. One simply cannot let this inner nightmare get hold of him. On the picture, there had to be various layers put down, wiped off and started all over again. The tongues of flame sticking out from the picture are the words of a shaman. They enliven the painting, otherwise it could have got exhausted. One should not attempt to extinguish this fire but rather get away from it occasionally. Numerous travels made Bogdan Korczowski a collector and the devourer of visions which he has been offering us on his canvases. His eyes, thus fed, has led his hand to translating all these into painting… As all the little spots thrown against the effort of his life, Korczowski has painted the undefined fragments of memory; the collective and the personal. He has been living in a rush, constantly painting in order to escape death. The core of the matter has always been to leave the trace of one's passing…

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