Sławomir Witkowski (b. 1961) is a Polish painter, graphic artist, designer, and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.
"I paint figures in states of suspension—neither present nor absent"
My work explores the human being marked by systems of power, social exclusion, and forms of violence that often do not appear directly, but operate through erasure, invalidation, and the loss of visibility. I paint figures suspended between presence and absence, between agency and objectification.
The cycles I develop are not linear narratives, but fields of tension in which the body becomes a trace of pressure, collapse, and endurance. What matters most to me is the trace — what experience leaves behind on the body, in gesture, and in the face.
Sławomir Witkowski (b. 1961) is a Polish painter, graphic artist, designer, and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. He served as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Graphic Arts from 2008 to 2016 and as Dean from 2016 to 2024. His work is centred primarily on painting, and in particular on expressive figuration as a means of confronting the human condition within contemporary systems of violence, exclusion, memory, and symbolic power.
Working at the intersection of painting and graphic art, Witkowski has developed a visual language grounded in strong contour, heightened colour, deformation, and psychological intensity. His images move between the individual body and the collective condition, between private tension and public catastrophe. Rather than offering narrative illustration, they construct dense moral and emotional situations that call for slow reading and sustained attention.
A recurring concern in his practice is the instability of human identity under pressure — political, social, historical, and existential. The cycles he develops engage such experiences as war, surveillance, ecological destruction, social marginalisation, ritualised fear, and the corrosion of community. At the same time, his work remains deeply rooted in the language of painting itself: gesture, matter, rhythm, and the tension between figuration and dissolution.
His work has been exhibited extensively in Poland and abroad in more than 50 solo exhibitions and over 150 group exhibitions, and is represented in private and institutional collections. Witkowski’s art is often understood as a form of ethical grotesque — a contemporary mode of figurative expressionism in which dramatic imagery is joined with critical reflection. This dual position — as artist and academic — has shaped a practice that is both visually immediate and intellectually self-aware, grounded in the conviction that painting remains a serious instrument for reflecting on contemporary experience.
Paintings from This World,(upcoming)
Refectory Gallery of Contemporary Art · Kartuzy, Poland
Witkowski Paintings
Miejska Galeria Sztuki MM / Chorzów Cultural Centre · Chorzów, Poland
Special Visual Operation
DACCO Gallery, Kostrzyn Culture Centre · Kostrzyn nad Odrą, Poland
Pathogen
Extravagance Gallery, Sosnowiec Art Centre – Sielecki Castle · Sosnowiec, Poland
Fragments
Karkonosze Museum · Jelenia Góra, Poland
Sve je na papiru
Centre for Graphic and Visual Research “AKADEMIJA” · Belgrade, Serbia
PANGEA – Challenges of Imagination
Baltic Sea Cultural Centre, Old Town Hall · Gdańsk, Poland
Scenes of Everyday Life with a Skeleton in the Background
Department of Modern Art, National Museum in Gdańsk, Abbots’ Palace · Gdańsk, Poland
Witkowski Paintings
Polish Institute in Bucharest / “Tătărași” Cultural Centre · Iași, Romania
Scenes of Everyday Life with a Skeleton in the Background,
Polish Institute · Sofia, Bulgaria
She and He
Department of Modern Art, National Museum in Gdańsk, Abbots’ Palace · Gdańsk, Poland
Witkowski – Paintings
BWA (Art Exhibitions Center) · Bydgoszcz, Poland
Witkowski – Drawings
Gallery at the Abbots’ Palace, National Museum in Gdańsk · Gdańsk, Poland
Witkowski – Paintings,
CENFORSOC · Charleroi, Belgia
For You Baby,
Eppelheim Town Hall · Heidelberg, Germany
New Expression
Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu · Toruń, Poland
International Print Triennial Kraków 2024
Momentum · Cracow, Poland
Magic of Symbols
Museum of Graphic Art of the Schreiner Foundation · Bad Steben, Germany
Synergy of Opposites
National Museum of Montenegro · Cetinje, Montenegro
Gdańsk–Ulaanbaatar Poster Exhibition
Central Museum of Chinggis Khaan · Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Prishtina International Poster Festival, 2nd Edition
Lapidarium Museum · Prishtina, Kosovo
Exchange Exhibition of Polish Printmaking
Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts · Beijing, China
Tokyo International Mini-Print Triennial
Tama Art University · Tokio, Japan
9th Baltic States Biennial of Graphic Art
Kaliningrad Art Gallery · Kaliningrad
The Apogee of the New Expression. 1987
Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu · Toruń, Poland
7th Polish Print Triennial
BWA · Katowice, Poland
Kunst aus Polen
Berlin, Germany
Gdańsk School of Metaphor
Polish Cultural Institute · Berlin, Germany
LINEART. International Exhibition of 20th-Century Art
Ghent, Belgium
11th International Poster Biennale
Warsaw, Poland
Tama Art University
Tokyo, Japan
National Museum in Gdańsk
Gdańsk, Poland
NOMUS – New Art Museum
Gdańsk, Poland
District Museum in Bydgoszcz
Bydgoszcz, Poland
Poster Museum at Wilanów
Warsaw, Poland
Lapidarium Museum
Prishtina, Kosovo
Archaeological and Historical Museum in Elbląg
Elbląg, Poland
His works are also held in private collections in Norway, Germany, France, Canada, and Poland.
![[object Object]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2F2vi80r31%2Fproduction%2F4ea9939ec7ca8fd09f666b3ac090726732010d9c-2236x2730.png&w=3840&q=75)
Of the artist's many mythologies, Sławomir Witkowski seems closest to the Romantic consciousness, a crucial element of which is the "philosophy of illness." Witkowski draws the viewer into the game, presenting reality as pathological.
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The FRAGMENTY publishing house is the third volume of the Sławomir Witkowski – works series.
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Publication accompanying the exhibition of Sławomir Witkowski's graphics, Template of the 1980s and 1990s, at the Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, "Na Chlebnickej".
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