A new look at iconographic motifs in the works of Grzegorz Bednarski and Tadeusz Boruta

Abstract

Looking at the art of Grzegorz Bednarski and Tadeusz Boruta, we enter an area of searching for values and the truth. The artists with heightened religious, intellectual and artistic awareness reach freely for fundamental themes, finding in them an inexhaustible source of inspiration. The reality they create sparkles with diversity and abundance of iconographic motifs taken from religious painting of the centuries gone by. From the beginning of their artistic way with its roots in independent culture, they focused on putting issues in the context of theology, on guiding one towards the elements facilitating the proper identification of the subject of the presentation, finally, on showing its multi-aspect immersion in European iconographic tradition. What must have influenced creating a new look at Christian iconography is the curiosity and courage of the artists, their desire for cognition – for probing into and exploring one’s own existential space. Getting to God and discovering him – emphasizing religiousness through prosaic, completely secular elements.