Dimensions: 26 x 21 x 12 cm
Signed on the back: 'J.CITAK'
Biography
Józef Citak is an amateur sculptor born in 1921 in Barcice near Nowy Sącz. Initially he worked as a miner and railroad worker. He did not start creating until the 1960s, in Krynica, where he met the most outstanding Polish artist counted among the primitivists - Nikifor Krynicki. Citak repeatedly took up the motif of the human figure in his work, often with portrait features, as in the case of numerous images of his friend, the aforementioned Nikifor. There are various hypotheses about the reasons why the artist began his artistic activity. The persuasion to undertake it by those around him is illustrated by a phrase entitled "On the Citak" by Polish poet and satirist Jan Izydor Sztaudynger, the content of which reads, "Well, take a knife and create, because a nuż."
