Composition, "chemical image," 1950s
bromide/paper, 8.9 x 11.9 cm, vintage print
artist’s stamp on the reverse
Marek Piasecki was accepted as a member of the Krakow Group in 1958. In the mid-1950s, his photojournalistic images were published in “Świat Młodych” and “Stolica.”
In the 1950s, he became friends with Miron Białoszewski. Thanks to Białoszewski, Piasecki not only got to know the artistic circle centered around the Teatr na Tarczyńskiej, but also photographed the first performances. In addition to reportage and a uniquely conceived form of documentary, he was also a sensitive portraitist of his milieu. His body of work includes insightful portrait studies of Białoszewski, Nikifor, Zdzisław Beksiński, and Jerzy Lewczyński, with whom he became friends in the late 1950s.
Photography also had a significant influence on Piasecki’s strictly artistic practice, in which he frequently employed the technique of heliography and utilized photochemical processes to create abstract compositions (so-called “chemical images”). He participated, among others, in the 2nd and 3rd Exhibitions of Modern Art in Warsaw in 1957 and 1959. From the late 1950s, Piasecki’s work unfolded in two fields. In November 1958, he began working as a photojournalist for Tygodnik Powszechny, a position he held until 1962 (his photographs appeared in the publication until the mid-1960s). At the same time, the artist began an active artistic and exhibition career. He transformed his own studio into a kind of artistic installation, exhibiting fragments of it at shows through “objects”—spatial compositions consisting of boxes containing various items, such as doll parts, toys, or fabrics.
In 1967, Piasecki traveled to Sweden at the invitation of Konsthall in Lund. He settled and worked there, and his work was met with great acclaim. In recent years, Piasecki’s works have been rediscovered in Poland thanks to exhibitions at the Starmach Gallery in Kraków (Marek Piasecki. Heliographs, March–April 2007) and at Warsaw’s Zachęta (Marek Piasecki. Fragile, November 2008–January 2009).
