I have seen a TV report on a young artist’s exhibition lately. He was referred to as one of the most outstanding young artists. What I saw were neither pictures nor photographs around which the artist’s friends were standing. Somebody was talking about some displays and one could see various people walking around. The commentator was using many words taken from a philosophy dictionary and other sophisticated publications. At the end it was repeated again that this was a report on the exhibition of one of the most outstanding young Polish artists.
I presume that in that time Marek Luzar was probably painting or having a meal with his family, maybe reading. Anyway he was doing something useful as were millions of people who try to manifest their convictions, thoughts, bitterness, joy or hope in their lives.
Since the time of his studies at the Kraków Academy of Art. Marek Luzar has drawn and has painted landscapes, people, still nature. He has made films. What he has done has been excellent or worse, good or medium as in life and in the creative activity of every painter. One thing was visible from the beginning. Luzar has never pretended anything. He has always been himself. He has simply risked that he has painted truly what has moved him, what has amazed him and also what has frightened him.
The basis of his work is the careful study of nature but the painter’s emotions introduce more and more expression and deformation into his art. It’s not this kind of deformation that complicates or smears its message. The deformation in Luzar’s painting is the expression of experiencing life, of a moving emotion. The deformation and the clarity is the tone of the statement, is the painter’s truthfulness.
At the beginning , I probably wrote about the young artist maliciously. The reason why I have   one hand media coverage and a commentary full of strange theories concerning shallow artistic ideas. On the other hand the toil of an artist who included a message for us in his work. The message is about himself, his life, his faith, his things and his love. He does not use any pretence or camouflage. He paints and draws. He dwells upon the everlasting subjects and motifs. He extends his artistic experience to film and theatre. However, he always remains himself. Darkness and light, ancient gestures and motifs. Women and men, objects and interiors, landscapes and biblical scenes. In my opinion it is the stubbornness and consistency of Marek Luzar that allows us to think about him as a painter who can create his world and his vision in a mature way. Without any pretending or pose, without any shallow or naive expectation of success. Good painting has always been and will always be this way.

Stanisław Rodzinski

Professor, The President of Academy of Fine Arts

translated by Grażyna Kohut

 

It is not easy to talk about the essence of our human existence what is very deep in us and what goes too far away from the unfavourable every day life. It is an own reflection and if it is to be said in a wider company it is even more difficult to articulate. However this is what Marek Luzar's philosophy of life and art is based on. When we try to avoid ultimate questions for a moment, we only put them away from us. The certainty of their reality emanates from his pictures.
Human posture is their subject which is presented in ethic contexts in the most interesting of his works. Man is presented there with a meaningful emotionalism and painting energy. This is a sign of the artist's conscientious choice to remain open and to accept himself as well as the world he lives in. Maybe this is why he steps back not setting rules in his form language.
Luzar's painting art is thoroughly realistic. It has its own climate. Human corporeality and the corporeality of human problems are rendered with help of heavy, awkward forms which are sometimes sharp and brutal. This seemingly awkward way of presenting figures or scenes building indicates the state of incompleteness and cripplehood of our existence. It shows the artist's inborn readiness for empathy. His way of expression is close to the one of an amateur artist who looks for the good in the surrounding world. This attitude is very difficult to present convincingly in art, without rubbing against simplifications and even mystification. He managed to avoid these dangers especially one, the paresis of artistic means.
Questions concerning the way and sense of our existence are the most important elements for the artist. For me the essence and right interpretation of Luzar's pictures is man's transcendent birth when he, left alone, must rediscover himself.

Jan Motyka
text from the catalogue of exposition in Artemis gallery

 

I met Marek Luzar during his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1983/88 and since then I have been watching his artistic growth. It is not a difficult task to do because Luzar’s artistic activity can be clearly seen in the artistic life. He has already managed to organise many own exhibitions as well as to take part in the group ones.

He is artist endowed with a great ability of penetrating observation and lively imagination where the source of his painting inspiration is. The reflexive realism of Luzar’s pictures reveals in their content enclosed in figured compositions. He gives them the sense of philosophical metaphors, enclosed in forms full off dynamism and even dramaturgy. An almost baroque, one would like to say profusion and expression serves the direct transmission and shows the Luzar’s talents, temperament and his individual character. His utterances are sincere and the applied means sewing this aim confirm it definitely. What strikes one’s eyes is the consistency of his visions development, improvement and the consistency of the way he carries them into effect. All these testify to his definite choice of the way leading to the fulfilment of his talent.

Luzar’s amazing diligence and his creative commitment are the reasons for his already impressive output. It comprises paintings but also graphics, drawings and animated cartoons, which are full of original inventions. This deserves recognition and even admiration and creates a good perspective for Luzar’s further artistic development.

Prof. Ignacy Trybowski

Director of Palace of Art of Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Kraków

translated by Grażyna Kohut

The inconstancy of the world can be responded by a drawer, painter in a twofold way: either, through tracking them in series of sketches and paintings he can augment various versions, or by trying to embody the sum of what he knows about the world, how he perceives and experiences it, in one multilayer work. The latter attitude, whose aim used to be synthesis and the final effect was not infrequently a piece above all pieces, thus, a masterpiece, was something obvious and natural for the Old-Time Art.

Today, after the experiences of the Impressionists, Expressionists, Cubists, when the Art accompanies the variability and relativity of the world in a mutable language of the analysis of the individual aspects, appearances and meanings, an artist relinquishes the ambitious claim to create a masterpiece, but rather through stratifying the world he reacts to it with versions, series, cycles of paintings and sketches.

That is how I see paintings and sketches by Marek Luzar. Especially, the sketches prove how much he is particular about direct, immediate responding to the reality. Proliferating in dozens and hundreds the portraits, images and compositions present the complex, changeable and restless world. And that is what the painter’s imagination is like and the means he employs as well.

It is on this way, which rather does not lead to a piece above all pieces, where acknowledging of the unity and harmony of the world, a man and his art is being accomplished daily. The faith in the power of the artistic language, so frequently called in question in this day and age, is apparent in these paintings and sketches in a way which is principally genuine and profoundly intensive.

Zbylut Grzywacz

translated by Teresa Bucka