Stefan Gierowski

According to the artist, each painting has a structure and a framework based on physical laws until it leaves the studio and becomes an enigma, at the disposition of the viewer, who discerns its content through a combination of emotional response and introspection.

He came from a family of intellectuals, his father, Joseph Gierowski, was a doctor whose passion for painting played an important role in cultivating his son's artistic talent.

Artistic traditions in the family were also strongly present thanks to the figure of Antoni Gierowski, Józef's uncle, who was a nineteenth-century painter and drawer.

In 1941, at the age of 16, he began underground artistic education under the supervision of Andrzej Oleś, a well-known Kielce watercolourist, which he was forced to interrupt in 1944 because of his relocation to the Częstochowa Inspectorate.

During his studies, he established cooperation with the social and literary weekly magazine "Wieś", publishing an article on modern art, as well as illustrating subsequent issues.

[5] After completing his studies, in 1948, Gierowski returned to his hometown of Kielce, where he began working as an advisor for art in the Culture Department of the Provincial Council.

In 1955 he took part in the International Exhibition of Young Artists at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art where his composition 'I Love Life' won second prize.

The artists he met there, including Andrzej Wróblewski, Tadeusz Dominik, Magdalena Więcek, Marian Bogusz, Rajmund Ziemski, Jerzy Tchórzewski, Jacek Sempoliński and Alina Szapocznikow, have become long-time friends of Gierowski.

Together with the newly elected board, which included Jan Cybis, the President of the Association, and privately his friend, he started working on the new statute of ZPAP.

In the same year, persuaded by Marian Wnuk and Jan Cybis, Gierowski began working at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, taking up the course of Painting in Architecture at the Aleksander Kobzdej department.

Over the years, Gierowski's studio has produced over a hundred graduates, including Marian Czapla, Krzysztof Wachowiak, Jarosław Modzelewski, Marek Sobczyk, Ryszard Woźniak, Włodzimierz Pawlak, Tomasz Milanowski, Antoni Starowieyski and Jerzy Kalina.