Maria Wołyńska and Zbigniew Wołyński, Jan Berdyszak in his studio, 1967

Jan Berdyszak (1934-2014) was a sculptor, a painter, a graphic designer, an author of art installations, a scenographer, a pedagogue and an art theoretician. He began working at the State School of Decorative Arts in Poznan in 1965. At the time he ran the Sculpture Studio at the Department of Interior Design as well as gave classes at the Faculty of Painting, Graphic Design and Sculpture. In the years 1984-1987 he was the University’s vice-rector.

Jan Berdyszak, No title, 1966

Snatchy, dark, monumental form of the upper part of the painting is juxtaposed with the open, not entirely shut, whiteness of the bottom part. This creates a kind of an illusion of an interior space, a dialogue between weight and lightness, between something that is closed and something that is unidentified.