The ‘Epiphanies’ or revelations are quadrangles of canvas covered in paint of rich, rhythmic, relief texture. The deep, velvety black of the paintings’ background is cut with light beams that create elementary, geometrical figures and systems. The glowing reds, azures, greens and yellows form a pattern of a God’s messenger – Angelos. On Władysław Podrazik’s canvases bright lightning separates the day-side from the night-side.
They were like the coming
of invisible beings
like a breeze
that gusts
through an open window
I called them epiphanies
as they deserve
to have a name
in a human tongue
Former oranges
vermilions and yellows
frozen
in concentric glory
Now forms
of another presence
shining through
a night of substance
The gallery of Andrzej and Teresa Starmach presents the paintings of Władysław Podraziks, student of prof. Nowosielski and heir of similar spiritual orientation in art. The artist, doubtful that the world of impressions can become the source of art that touches universal problems, started to search within the abstract. However, thanks to their saturation with light the abstract form of his canvasses is devoid of geometrical dryness. The almost sculptural texture stresses the temperature of colours.
Podrazik’s focused, poetic and yet as if impersonal painting attracts with the power and purity of his vision. Contemplating his canvases the spectator is absorbed by the work of art and forced to penetrate it. The painting – an object of contemplation – becomes as transparent as glass, transfers to the reverse, reveals another reality. And this is the true mission of art. Podrazik’s tables pulsing with some inner light and motionless bring to mind the words of S. Weil: ‘The work of art has its author and yet when it is perfect there is something deeply anonymous in it. It copies the anonymity of the divine art.’ Podrazik’s painting seems to take this particular direction.
(“Gazeta Wyborcza – Gazeta w Krakowie” no. 133, 1993)