Slawomir RATAJSKI (b. 1955), Great Expectations 1984

oil, canvas-appliqué, canvas, 120.5 x 181 cm; signed, dated and described at bottom: GREAT ANTICIPATIONS S.RATAJSKI'84;
on the back author's description: SLAWOMIR / RATAJSKI / oil, canvas - 1984 / 120.5 x 181 cm.

EXHIBITED:
- Forma Gallery, Warsaw 1984.

The beginning of Slawomir Ratajski's artistic activity was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Art at that time was dominated by conceptual tendencies and painting described as the New Expression current. The art of the 1980s was sometimes linked to the political mood. The painting "Great Expectations" was created a year after the lifting of martial law. Exactly in 1984 the trials of "Solidarity" activists began, then Father Jerzy Popieluszko was kidnapped and murdered. At that time Slawomir Ratajski was preoccupied with issues of social resistance to authority and patriotism, which was particular to those times. The artist painted the series "Battle for the Wall" and "Flags." Like the canvas "Great Expectations," the artist's paintings from this period were painted using a juxtaposition of several primary colors emphasized by textural structure and expressive brushstrokes. Currently, Slawomir Ratajski runs his own Studio of Artistic Concepts at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. The painter places the main emphasis on the process of creation, treating its final result - the painting as an additional effect of the
of the action itself. In this way, the image of the process created on the canvas gives wide room for the viewer's own interpretation based on previous experience, associations. Slawomir Ratajski makes the viewer, through his perception, able to participate in the
in the process of creation.