Jerzy Bereś

Jerzy Bereś was born in Nowy Sącz in 1930, died in 2012 in Kraków.
Polish sculptor, author and performance artist. In 1956, he completed a program in sculpture in the Academy of Fine Arts in Xawery Dunikowski. His first solo exhibition was in 1958 in the Kraków House of Artists, where he presented the sculptures: 'Lullaby', 'The Sun', 'Mother', 'Eve', 'anxiety', 'Idyll' made of plaster and reinforced concrete. His experience at this exhibition influenced his decision to halt the work he had been doing up to this point and along with it the traditional methods he learned from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.
Just before 1960, he created his first sculptures of wood:'Rzepicha' and 'Bart'. However, these were very realistic renderings that led the artist to turn to minimalism. Since then, his sculptures in wood have become increasingly simple and stay as close as possible to the nature of the material used. In 1960 he created work out of natural materials in the series hallucinations and ine 1967 in the series The Oracle. He used field stones, hemp rope, scraps of canvas bag, leather straps (the characteristic of materials for his work).
In 1968, Bereś presented in Foksal Gallery in Warsaw first artistic manifestation of prophecy 'I'. It opens up a whole series of speeches that are a commentary on politics, religion, art and philosophy, in which the artist often uses his own body and the object. His work called 'Masses' discusses the most important Polish problems; the Mass Romantic, the 'political Mass, and the Mass in Polish'.