Exit, Stanczyk, Pursued by a Bear: Selected Artistic Exploits of Jan Sawka, 1969 - 1977

Stanczyk was a Renaissance-era Polish court jester. He is a mythic figure, a national symbol of resistance to oppression.

Jan Sawka (1946-2012), was an important artistic gadfly to the Polish communist regime. He created many non-conformist works under sole and shared authorship, including prints, posters, illustrations, theater designs, performance compositions, “happenings,” paintings, and “spoofs” (tricks played on the authorities). This paper will highlight several of the most representative and significant of Sawka’s artistic exploits between 1969 and 1977. These works were moves in a strange game played out before the Polish public, the Russian absentee masters, and the larger world. This game pitted non-compliant artists against the client state apparatus of censorship and control, an apparatus that often attempted to co-opt or even exploit the artists’ expressive energies, as well as to confine or suppress them. In this profoundly absurd game, where mockery was often the means, the young artists staked their lives. This game continued for Jan Sawka even after he fled Poland, demonstrating the lengths to which the regime would go in its attempts to manage and “spin” an ambivalent relationship with talented members of the Polish post-war generation.

The presentation includes materials in several collections, including the Jan Sawka estate, and is informed by private conversations with Jan Sawka during the last 11 years of his life, as well as with his widow, Hanna Sawka, after his death.

This paper will elucidate Jan Sawka’s output, 1969-77, by reference to Stanczyk, archetypal symbol of resistance, as unifying metaphor.