The exhibition present drawings and paintings made by Łukasz Korolkiewicz in the early 1970s. Better known as a figurative painter, Korolkiewicz was inspired in his early years by surrealism, pop-art and the psychedelic  aesthetic, all common themes in that decade. Yet even at that early stage, his work was already showing signs of eroticism and the peculiar melancholy mood that is so definitive of his later art.

Korolkiewicz drew for only a few years, after graduating  in from the Academy of Fine Arts. These were not sketches for paintings, but artworks in their own right, painstakingly executed in sessions that took several hours. A large portion of them were drawn during the artist’s several-month-long stay at a contagious disease hospital. With their endless tangles of male genitals and toothy grins, these pieces in particular convey a sense of anxiety and a claustrophobic mood.

Łukasz Korolkiewicz’s drawings are a practically unknown part of his oeuvre. They have only been displayed twice, and only in the 1970s. Their unique and consistent form suggests that they are not merely a footnote to the artist’s overall body of work, but a separate, long- finished chapter.