Marek Piasecki

Photographer, graphic artist, and creator of sculptural miniatures, Marek Piasecki was one of the most original Polish artists of the second half of the 20th century. In his Kraków studio, he constructed a personal microcosm composed of found objects and images created without a camera, using techniques that brought his photographs closer to graphic art and mixed media. He also worked as a photojournalist, documenting postwar life in Kraków and other Polish cities.

Piasecki was born in Warsaw in 1935. After the Warsaw Uprising, his family relocated to Kraków. During World War II, he studied drawing and painting and received his first camera. After the war, he attended primary school and, between 1948 and 1949, trained in a photographic laboratory. At that time, he also visited the Kraków Schools of Art, where he practiced painting techniques and met members of the Kraków Group.

Shortly after being admitted to study art history at the Jagiellonian University in 1952, Piasecki was arrested for political reasons and sentenced to six years in prison. Due to poor health, he was released in 1953 and spent much of his time in sanatoria, where he devoted himself to photography.

Despite the constraints of Socialist Realism, an underground art scene flourished in Poland. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Piasecki participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In 1955, he resumed his studies and formed a close friendship with poet and playwright Miron Białoszewski, whose performances he photographed. In 1958, he joined the second Kraków Group. His work appeared in art magazines such as Fotografia, and he contributed as a photojournalist to Tygodnik Powszechny, Stolica, and Świat Młodych. His documentary photography was informed by a “black realism” rooted in Italian neorealism, focusing on the drab, visually unappealing aspects of everyday life.

According to Dobromiła Błaszczyk, Piasecki’s works are “subjective visions-compositions,” distinguished by their technical diversity. In 1955, he began producing heliographs—photograms based on a technique developed by Man Ray in the 1920s, involving objects placed directly on photosensitive paper without a camera. In this process, areas covered by the object remain white, while exposed sections turn black. This form of “chemical painting” served as a point of departure for his further experimentation: his “miniatures” were created by applying chemicals directly onto photosensitive paper, incorporating ink, collage elements, and exposing works to high temperatures. Between 1955 and 1959, he also began to create three-dimensional compositions by arranging found objects inside specially constructed display cases.

Piasecki’s Kraków studio was filled with boxes of collected objects—chiefly dolls—transforming the space into a kind of habitat artwork. He later exhibited these objects in Sweden in works such as My Room in Lund and My Room in Södertälje.

Among his most iconic works is the Dolls series. Piasecki treated the dolls like protagonists of his visual reportage, dismembering their bodies and enclosing fragments in boxes or frames. These gestures can be read as metaphors for oppression (imprisonment) or as acts of protection from the outside world. His altered perception of the human body may have stemmed from the traumatic experiences of his wartime childhood—a legacy that shaped the sensibilities of many artists of his generation.

In 2008, the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw presented a solo exhibition of his work. His photographs have since been exhibited in Poznań (Galeria Piekary, 2016) and London (Mummery + Schnelle, 2014), and are held in the collections of the National Museum in Kraków, the National Museum in Warsaw, Malmö Museum, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and numerous private collections worldwide.

Marek Piasecki died in Lund, Sweden, in 2011. That same year, his works were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

More about the artist: https://faf.org.pl/artists/marek-piasecki/?lang=en

Bibliography (selection):

Błaszczyk, Dobromiła. “Antyfotograficzna Mikrogalaktyka.” In Marek Piasecki. With Care. Poznań, 2017.
Iversen, Margaret. “Marek Piasecki.” In Marek Piasecki. London, 2014.
Kordjak-Piotrowska, Joanna. “Spotkanie Oko w Oko.” In Marek Piasecki. Fragile, edited by Joanna Kordjak-Piotrowska. Warsaw, 2008.