Jan Sawka: Theatre of Image and Metaphor

Abstract

The visual artist Jan Sawka (1946–2012) is best known for his painting and printmaking: his works are in the collections of over sixty international museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. holds a collection of his intaglio prints, the largest by any single artist in the fine print section of the library. While interest in Sawka’s art has remained strong in the years since his death, it seems to have especially grown in the last two years, with solo exhibitions in 2020 at the Samuel Dorsky Museum at the State University of New York–New Paltz and at the Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art at California State University, San Bernardino. In conjunction with these two shows, a number of events have generated a continuing presence online. Some were among the earliest art exhibitions to respond to the Covid shutdown with virtual walkthroughs and an online symposium on the work of Sawka, a video of which can still be viewed on the CSUSB website. In 2021, the Ossolineum National Archival Institute in Wrocław, Poland, organized an exhibition of art from the earliest part of Sawka’s career. Moreover, in 2022, an exhibition at the Wende Museum of the Cold War in Culver City, California, on display from April to October, has featured works by Sawka.