Janina Jadwiga Sarzyńska was born in Osła and has lived and worked in Bolesławiec since her school years. In 2001, she graduated from the Faculty of Art Education at the Academy of Fine Arts (now the University of Arts) in Poznań. Her studies allowed her to explore theoretical issues in contemporary art in the area of geometric abstraction and concrete art and inspired her to think about important values not only in visual arts, but also in music, poetry and philosophy. She included her conclusions in her master’s thesis “Geometry of Abstraction. Introduction to the work of Gerard Jürgen Blum-Kwiatkowski’, whose supervisor was Professor Roman Kubicki. At the Faculty of Art Education, she also simultaneously studied, among other things, painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, printmaking and interdisciplinary activities. She obtained her artistic diploma in the sculpture studio of Prof. Kazimierz Raby, presenting a sculptural-photographic series “Peeping at the Grey”.

She works in sculpture, painting and photography and, from 2019, also in film. In her work, different disciplines merge and intermingle; sculpture inspires photographic and graphic activities, and photographs of the natural world inspire watercolour painting. All these disciplines make up the space of her artistic explorations, experiences, records of abstract signs, codes, from their geometric forms to their organic suppleness.

She has presented her work in exhibitions at home and abroad (Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania). In 2005 and 2006 she took part in the International Ceramic and Sculpture Plein-Air in Bolesławiec. She is a member of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers, Wrocław District.

Since 2002 she has dealt with pedagogical work. In the years 2002-2007 she worked in secondary schools in Bolesławiec as a teacher of art subjects. She creates original educational programmes, which she also implements with young people in school extracurricular activities.

In 2008, she completed postgraduate studies at the University of Wrocław in cultural studies, broadening her pedagogical competences to include issues of cultural theory, musicology, theatre studies and film studies. In 2007-2009, she cooperated with the Lower Silesian Teacher Training Centre in Wrocław and the Teacher Training Centre in Jelenia Góra as a lecturer of courses on art and art therapy workshops. In the course of this cooperation, she prepared and published original didactic programmes for teachers, which she presented at workshops, scientific conferences and as part of the Interreg III A programme Saxony – Lower Silesia. She has also produced a series of original multimedia and interdisciplinary lectures on art and culture entitled “Encounters with Art”.

You can find out more about the work of Janina Jadwiga Sarzyńska on her website.

We invite you to watch a video with the artist’s participation prepared by the editors of the portal istotne.pl as part of the series “Beyond the everyday”.istotne.pl.