JAROSLAW BAUC, FAMILY PORTRAIT

Painting Guide

Great Families of Europe- The Sandhofer Family

I am the painter of the family (the Sandhofers’); once such a resolution grounded a significant position of a painter in the social hierarchy. An artist admitted under the auspices of a house not only did perform the role of a witness of the bloom of the place. Inasmuch he took his place among strange, dark things, not fully comprehensible, emerged in both mystery and grotesque. These days, following the age of art autonomy, the rearrangement of relationship between artist and society, the artist’s return to the bosom of a defined spectator, constitutes an outright separate element of artistic endeavour, labelled as art in public space and relative art.

The classic comeback to the principal, patron and donator had been attempted by Lucien Freud with his small portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Bearing in mind the artist’s suffering and dilemmas, yet the created piece became a gross representation of his artistic output, devoid of artistic dimension, only a mere veristic sign of the living monarch painted on canvas.

The series of paintings exhibited in Sandhofer Gallery features the motif of Sandhofer family presentations. I have been closely tied to the family through both over two decades of my creative work and predominantly deep and beautiful emotions.

The exhibited cycle of portrait paintings belongs to the series titled ”Guide to Painting”, which consists of numerous works related to historical conditioning of artistic entrepreneurship. Painting portraits of the Sandhofer family has been the endeavour to embrace the picture of people whom I hold dear, recognizable not solely through the depiction but known to me from their life histories, their position in the family. I cannot deny that such perception of situation determines thoughts and choices of the artist. Through the presentation of the Sandhofer family, I was trying to reach both ”the artistic truth about them” and the truth in painting for myself.

Biography

Born 17 January 1959 in Cracow.

In 1985 he graduated in the studio of Prof. Włodzimierz Łajming and began work in the Academy of Fine Arts in Danzig.

In 1997, at the invitation of Prof. Markus Lupertz, he participated in master workshops in Amsterdam. In 2005 the Institute of Art History of Danzig University invited him to facilitate the post of Associate Professor, wherein he hosted monographic lectures in contemporary art.

In 2015, nominated by the President of Republic Poland, he obtained the title of Professor and began working in the position of Painting Studio Head in his Alma Mater.

Since 2005 he has been working as curator of the 4/3 Jesionowa Street Author’s Gallery in Danzig and editor of publications accompanying the output of the gallery.