Bio
Zbigniew Paluszak (1931–2012) was one of the most distinctive and intriguing figures in post-war Wrocław painting—an artist for whom painting became a way of experiencing the world deeply, attentively, and poetically.
His artistic path began like a story about coming of age in art. In 1948, young Zbyszek fled his hometown of Ostrów Wielkopolski to reach the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Wrocław. He lacked formal documents, but not passion: he passed the entrance exam before the legendary “Grandfather” Kopystyński and was admitted. In Waldemar Cwenarski’s half-studio, half-apartment he became certain that painting would not be an addition to life, but its axis.
He continued his studies at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Wrocław under Maria Dawska and Eugeniusz Geppert, graduating in 1957. From the outset he remained an artist conscious of his craft yet distrustful of ready-made formulas. Although he grappled with realism and post-impressionism, he quickly developed his own language. Closely connected with the Wrocław artistic community, he was a member of the Wrocław Group, a teacher and long-standing headmaster of the Secondary School of Fine Arts, and simultaneously a distinguished graphic designer for the magazine Odra.
Though often referred to as a colorist, he described himself as a “naturalist”, a naturalism understood in his own way: as immersion in the rhythms of nature, in the structure of wood, earth, stone, wings. His paintings emerge from the tension between construction and elemental force, symbol and concrete form. He worked in cycles, from early figurative works to Towns, Boats, Cages, Wrecks, Tree Portraits, and later to the moving Requiem for a Bird and the luminous late cycle Four Seasons.
Paluszak was a painter of restrained gesture. Every painting began with a sketch, a structure, a carefully planned arrangement of colors. And yet the final canvases pulse with light and organic matter, as if they were growing from within. Watercolor held a special place in his work, used in an unconventional, multilayered, luminous manner, disciplined yet full of delicate austerity.
As a press graphic designer, he co-created the recognizable visual language of Odra, working with line, light, and typography with remarkable precision. Widely awarded for his work, he exhibited throughout Poland and abroad, in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, West Germany, Sweden, Canada, and Japan. His works appeared at key exhibitions of Polish art and in many solo shows, including at the National Museum in Wrocław.
Privately, he was a modest, attentive man, deeply connected with nature. He “listened to trees,” returning to them as a metaphor of birth, growth, and passing.
Paluszak’s painting invites contemplation, to look more deeply and attentively, “beneath the lining of the world.” His works, pulsating with light and organic matter, remain a profound testament to the artist’s dialogue with nature and time.
Paluszak’s exhibition record was extensive, encompassing both Polish and international institutions.
Major solo exhibitions:
1961 – Silesian Museum
1961 – BWA Wrocław
1969 – Painting in the Philharmonic
1971 – Kordegarda Gallery, Warsaw
1973 – National Museum in Wrocław
1976 – Gallery of the Contemporary Theatre, Wrocław
1978 – Wertheim Gallery, Berlin (watercolors)
1980 – Museum in Strzegom
1982 – Polish Cultural Institute, Bremen (watercolors)
1987 – Exhibition in East Germany
1990 – Exhibition in Wiesbaden
1991 – Painting and Drawing, Berlin and Leipzig
1997 – Polish House, Bucharest, Pleven
2010 – Exhibition in Wiesbaden
and all exhibitions of the Wrocław Group from the 1960s onward.
Selected group exhibitions:
1958 – The World of Pictorial Metaphor
1962 – National Exhibition of Young Artists, Radom
1967 – 5th Festival of Contemporary Polish Painting, Szczecin
1969 – Bielska Jesień, Bielsko-Biała
1970 – Presence of Art, Warsaw
1971 – Contemporary Polish Art – Athens
1974 – Exhibition in Yokohama
1976 – 6th Festival of Fine Arts, Warsaw
1980 – Contemporary Polish Watercolor, Budapest
1984 – Exhibition at Haus der Kunst, Wiesbaden
1996 – Polnische Kulturwoche, Bobenheim-Roxheim
His works were also shown in Canada, Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, West Germany, Romania, and Japan.
