Tomasz Mrozowski born on March 3, 1973 in Mielec. He graduated from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences and in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts named after Prof. Eugeniusz Geppert in Wrocław. He lives and works near Mielec, in the south-eastern part of Poland. Hidden from the world in his studio “Manufactura Epikura”, he devotes himself to his passion – painting and ceramics. His works are inspired by mythology and classical music. He tries to synthesize these two concepts in order to create its own etymology and morphology of the image of the universe while emphasizing the distance from the attempt to discover the meaning of existence.
Artist’s statement
“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture”, Frank Zappa once reportedly said. Of course – I don’t entirely agree with him, as I base all my work on this kind of ‘dancing’. But how, then, to talk about visual works whose author has set himself the goal of rendering a musical form? It is certainly not an easy task, all the more so when one is dealing with a multi-faceted, erudite oeuvre, and such are the works that make up the oeuvre of Tomasz Mrozowski. To understand his works, it is necessary to realise the artist’s most important sources of inspiration.
The first and perhaps most important source of inspiration for Tomasz Mrozowski’s work is myth. However, the artist looks at the well-known archetypes in a completely new way, trying to get to their essence, to the bones of their meaning (hence, probably, the title of another Mrozowski series – Osteomythology). When I look at Mrozowski’s works, my loose associations run in the direction of the sensual music of Karol Szymanowski from the second period of his oeuvre, described (in a nutshell!) as impressionistic.
Another important source of inspiration for Mrozowski is polyphony, which for him is a symbol of musical objectivity. This type of texture was created and began to be developed by composers from the Notre Dame school active in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries – Leoninus and Perotinus; it later reached its mastery in the vocal music of composers of the Franco-Flemish school, such as Johannes Ockeghem and Orlando di Lasso. Of course, this type of texture also appeared later, including in the Romantic programme symphonies of Ferenc Liszt or Pyotr Tchaikovsky, but for many the emblem of polyphony is the instrumental work of Johann Sebastian Bach, a composer particularly close to Mrozowski. He became famous as the creator of some of the finest fugues in the history of music, and the sum of the composer’s thoughts on the matter is a collection entitled Die Kunst der Fuge. This complex musical form originated in the seventeenth century and has since been a kind of test of a particular composer’s artistry. It consists of several voices (usually two to six) and several themes (one to four).
One of the most outstanding performers of the Leipzig cantor’s works was the eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982), who also became the protagonist of one of Mrozowski’s works. This artist’s eccentricity stemmed, among other things, from his remarkably free approach to musical matter.
Gould even coined the term “prolific betrayal”, according to which the performer must say something absolutely new in the piece being performed. If he is unable to do so, he should (at least in Gould’s view!) change the work.
The Canadian obviously practised ‘prolific betrayal’ on a large scale, but his eccentricity did not end there. An introvert and perfectionist, at one point in his life he gave up public performances and concentrated solely on his work in the recording studio. A fascinating figure, still evoking extreme opinions today!
The motif of using musical terminology in the visual arts is not new. Experts in painting may recall the symphonies and nocturnes of the American Romantic artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) or the symphonies and sonatas of the Lithuanian symbolist Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911), who created multipartite compositions in which the individual movements also bore musical titles; his oeuvre also included a fugue. The latter artist once stated: “There are no boundaries between the arts. Music combines poetry and painting and has its own architecture. Painting can have the same architecture as music and express sounds in paint”.
Another source of inspiration for Mrozowski is the work of the French painter, creator of the pointillist technique, Georges Seurat (1859-1891). As the name suggests, the starting point for the artist is the point – the smallest unit of expression. The fact that it is his work that is so inspiring to Mrozowski seemed paradoxical to me at first. For if polyphony is the interpenetration of colourful lines, then pointillism, focused on a single point, may bring to mind (at least to the writer of these words) the aphoristic serialism of a composer representing the second Viennese school – Anton Webern.
French existentialism with particular reference to the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus is another of the axes on which the painter’s work is based. Man’s loss in the world, the fear of death and the desire to defend against transience are timeless issues that Mrozowski addresses in his work. Particularly moving in this context are his paintings contained in the polyptych Prometheus (the motif of this hero appears in the works of Ludwig van Beethoven and Ferenc Liszt) and the triptych of watercolours Ocean of Nothingness. They depict the confrontation and collapse of human figures into the surrounding nothingness.
Tomasz Mrozowski’s expressive works are the result of creatively filtering an amalgam of various influences and inspirations. They provide a starting point for explorations into the universal problems of human existence, with particular emphasis on their musical context.
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Vendor Biography
Tomasz Mrozowski born on March 3, 1973 in Mielec. He graduated from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences and in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts named after Prof. Eugeniusz Geppert in Wrocław. He lives and works near Mielec, in the south-eastern part of Poland. Hidden from the world in his studio “Manufactura Epikura”, he devotes himself to his passion – painting and ceramics. His works are inspired by mythology and classical music. He tries to synthesize these two concepts in order to create its own etymology and morphology of the image of the universe while emphasizing the distance from the attempt to discover the meaning of existence.
Artist’s statement
“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture”, Frank Zappa once reportedly said. Of course – I don’t entirely agree with him, as I base all my work on this kind of ‘dancing’. But how, then, to talk about visual works whose author has set himself the goal of rendering a musical form? It is certainly not an easy task, all the more so when one is dealing with a multi-faceted, erudite oeuvre, and such are the works that make up the oeuvre of Tomasz Mrozowski. To understand his works, it is necessary to realise the artist’s most important sources of inspiration.
The first and perhaps most important source of inspiration for Tomasz Mrozowski’s work is myth. However, the artist looks at the well-known archetypes in a completely new way, trying to get to their essence, to the bones of their meaning (hence, probably, the title of another Mrozowski series – Osteomythology). When I look at Mrozowski’s works, my loose associations run in the direction of the sensual music of Karol Szymanowski from the second period of his oeuvre, described (in a nutshell!) as impressionistic.
Another important source of inspiration for Mrozowski is polyphony, which for him is a symbol of musical objectivity. This type of texture was created and began to be developed by composers from the Notre Dame school active in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries – Leoninus and Perotinus; it later reached its mastery in the vocal music of composers of the Franco-Flemish school, such as Johannes Ockeghem and Orlando di Lasso. Of course, this type of texture also appeared later, including in the Romantic programme symphonies of Ferenc Liszt or Pyotr Tchaikovsky, but for many the emblem of polyphony is the instrumental work of Johann Sebastian Bach, a composer particularly close to Mrozowski. He became famous as the creator of some of the finest fugues in the history of music, and the sum of the composer’s thoughts on the matter is a collection entitled Die Kunst der Fuge. This complex musical form originated in the seventeenth century and has since been a kind of test of a particular composer’s artistry. It consists of several voices (usually two to six) and several themes (one to four).
One of the most outstanding performers of the Leipzig cantor’s works was the eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982), who also became the protagonist of one of Mrozowski’s works. This artist’s eccentricity stemmed, among other things, from his remarkably free approach to musical matter.
Gould even coined the term “prolific betrayal”, according to which the performer must say something absolutely new in the piece being performed. If he is unable to do so, he should (at least in Gould’s view!) change the work.
The Canadian obviously practised ‘prolific betrayal’ on a large scale, but his eccentricity did not end there. An introvert and perfectionist, at one point in his life he gave up public performances and concentrated solely on his work in the recording studio. A fascinating figure, still evoking extreme opinions today!
The motif of using musical terminology in the visual arts is not new. Experts in painting may recall the symphonies and nocturnes of the American Romantic artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) or the symphonies and sonatas of the Lithuanian symbolist Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911), who created multipartite compositions in which the individual movements also bore musical titles; his oeuvre also included a fugue. The latter artist once stated: “There are no boundaries between the arts. Music combines poetry and painting and has its own architecture. Painting can have the same architecture as music and express sounds in paint”.
Another source of inspiration for Mrozowski is the work of the French painter, creator of the pointillist technique, Georges Seurat (1859-1891). As the name suggests, the starting point for the artist is the point – the smallest unit of expression. The fact that it is his work that is so inspiring to Mrozowski seemed paradoxical to me at first. For if polyphony is the interpenetration of colourful lines, then pointillism, focused on a single point, may bring to mind (at least to the writer of these words) the aphoristic serialism of a composer representing the second Viennese school – Anton Webern.
French existentialism with particular reference to the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus is another of the axes on which the painter’s work is based. Man’s loss in the world, the fear of death and the desire to defend against transience are timeless issues that Mrozowski addresses in his work. Particularly moving in this context are his paintings contained in the polyptych Prometheus (the motif of this hero appears in the works of Ludwig van Beethoven and Ferenc Liszt) and the triptych of watercolours Ocean of Nothingness. They depict the confrontation and collapse of human figures into the surrounding nothingness.
Tomasz Mrozowski’s expressive works are the result of creatively filtering an amalgam of various influences and inspirations. They provide a starting point for explorations into the universal problems of human existence, with particular emphasis on their musical context.