Until 25 February 2023, two galleries in Berlin:  Galerie nüüd and the Gallery of the Polish Institute, are showing simultaneously the paintings of Jerzy Skolimowski, who is nominated for this year’s Oscar for his film IO.

The exhibition of the artist’s works is one of the events associated with the Berlinale. Twenty-four works by the artist will be presented in the German capital.

The exhibition is organised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Polish Institute in Berlin, the Galerie Opera – Grand Theatre National Opera and Galerie nuud.berlin.

“An Oscar nomination makes for a whirlwind expansion of interest in a particular artist. In the case of Jerzy Skolimowski, we are dealing with an artist whose international career is not only well-established, but also widely known”, stresses Barbara Schabowska, Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

“The exhibition of his intriguing, disturbing paintings, which one cannot pass by indifferently, allows us to get in touch with Skolimowski’s sensitivity and imagination in a way that supplements the vivisection of his film imagination with non-obvious contexts”, adds Barbara Schabowska.

The first exhibition of Skolimowski’s work took place in 1996, and his paintings are in the collection of Jack Nicholson, among many others. In interviews, Skolimowski says that he can paint with anything that comes into his hands. 

“I’ve been drawing since childhood, I started using paints as a teenager. But the turning point was a spontaneous decision to paint a large format. In 1997, I created Agony, measuring 252 x 126 centimetres, and then painted the same format of cardboard for several years until I switched to canvas, gradually increasing in size until it was almost the size of a film screen: 3 by 5 metres”, says Jerzy Skolimowski reminiscing.

Adrian Andrzejewski