Jan Dziaczkowski (1983-2011) was born in Warsaw. In 2007 he graduated from the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, having studied there under Professor Krzysztof Wachowiak.
A painter, photographer, illustrator and collagist, Dziaczkowski would, in a period of just a few years, begin to establish himself as one of the most talented and compelling of young artists at work in Poland. Exhibited both within Poland and abroad, he participated in group shows in England, Germany, Spain, and the United States, including You Can’t Get There From Here, at the Camera Club of New York in 2010.
Dziaczkowski collaborated with and was supported by the Foundation for Visual Arts. Keine Grenze, his 2008 solo exhibit at the ZPAF i S-ka Gallery, showcased collages in which the artist explored a parallel postwar architectural legacy for Western European cities. Working with period postcards, Dziaczkowski spliced, transposed, and juxtaposed elements of Eastern Bloc architecture with Western European landmarks. The resulting cityscapes (in which, for example, Chartres Cathedral finds itself hemmed in by stolid rows of Soviet apartment blocks) are conjectural; and yet they also, upon first glance, feel eerily familiar.
Jan Dziaczkowski died in September 2011, while hiking in the Tatra Mountains. Since his death, the Foundation for Visual Arts has begun cataloguing and archiving the artist’s paintings, photographs, drawings, and collages, with a view toward preserving his tragically abbreviated legacy and disseminating his work over time.
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