Mоже ся не верну / I May Not Return - Dawid Zdobylak
6 October - 2 November 2025
Contemporary Art Gallery BWA SOKÓŁ - FOYER
vernissage:
10 October 2025, hour 18:00
From 6 October to 2 November 2025 in the SOKÓŁ FOYER an exhibition of the newest cycle of paintings of Dawid Zdobylak will be held, pertaining to the artist’s root and to the tragic fate of the Lemko nationality.
Dawid Zdobylak
Artist of Polish-Lemko descent. He was born in 1993 in Chobienia in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship of Poland. He attended the Secondary School of General Education no 2 in Lubin. He studied at the Faculty of Painting of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Poland, in the studio of Prof. Janusz Matuszewski and in the studio of drawing under Prof. Grzegorz Wnęk. In 2017, he obtained his Master’s diploma for a work titled “Nature’s Portrait.” In 2018, he finished a post-diploma course in pedagogy. In 2023, Mr Zdobylak defended his doctoral theses. Currently, he runs his own business as an artist-painter.
Return Home
What we consider as ‘home’ is that which is ours, safe, and with what we identify. A home can be a building, a specific location, our homeland, our family, or our sense of belonging to a particular culture. I myself did not know for a long time where my true home was. I grew up in the Lower Silesia as a descendant of the relocated Lemkos and Lviv Poles. As a child, I would visit both Eastern Orthodox churches, and Catholic churches, which are so related to each other, yet so different. Once in the primary school I heard a byname, "You, Lemko.” Lemko? Naturally, I had already known my ancestry. This teasing, disdainful tone stuck in my mind. Why? Were the Lemko roots something to be ashamed of? As it turned out, to some they were.
I abandoned the theme of my Lemko identity for many years. I would internalize it, rather than externalize it, unless someone asked. This was the case until the time of my doctorate, in which, by using portraits, I wanted to describe the experiences and the history of specific persons. It was then that I began to present the story of my grandfather, Piotr Kocur, with the painting "The History of My Grandfather, Piotr Kocur I,” among others. From the capture of my grandfather to a labour camp in Dresden, his resettlement in the Vistula Operation to a small town in the Recovered Territories. His individual story was also a common experience of thousands of people made leave their homeplace. Uprooted to a new reality, they slowly began to wither. The lost home became unconsciously the experience of the generations to follow.
From early childhood I have been hearing the story that “here” (in the Lower Silesia) we are not at home, that hidden somewhere is our Promised Land. I also saw the holdovers from the previous owners, the almost mythical Germans. Epitaphs on gravestones in German, the dilapidated palaces, World War I memorials, standing like monoliths of a collapsed civilization. The attempt to show my grandfather’s story absorbed me so much that half of my doctoral paintings are about him. This was a prelude to a painterly presentation of the dramatic fates of the Lemkos (e.g. the painting “On the Last Day of the World”), where I showed in the foreground a traditional Lemko marriage ceremony, costumes and everyday life, while in the background of that idyllic scene, the forced relocation of the Vistula Operation, is underway. Additionally, the image is enclosed in a frame with a poem by Jerzy Harasymowicz:
Who made that happen and what for?
Abandoned orchards now producing only clouds.
Empty houses that have yellowed with age,
being for so many years dismantled by our conscience.
Yesterday, as if unhorsing a casqued rider,
they tore down a church,
and just hide deeper in a dense thicket,
afraid to show the church their bearded faces. Fields have begun to overgrow with homeless grass.
Glory to our consciences, glory.
Dawid Zdobylak
(t/r AK)
Artist of Polish-Lemko descent. He was born in 1993 in Chobienia in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship of Poland. He attended the Secondary School of General Education no 2 in Lubin. He studied at the Faculty of Painting of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Poland, in the studio of Prof. Janusz Matuszewski and in the studio of drawing under Prof. Grzegorz Wnęk. In 2017, he obtained his Master’s diploma for a work titled “Nature’s Portrait.” In 2018, he finished a post-diploma course in pedagogy. In 2023, Mr Zdobylak defended his doctoral theses. Currently, he runs his own business as an artist-painter.
Return Home
What we consider as ‘home’ is that which is ours, safe, and with what we identify. A home can be a building, a specific location, our homeland, our family, or our sense of belonging to a particular culture. I myself did not know for a long time where my true home was. I grew up in the Lower Silesia as a descendant of the relocated Lemkos and Lviv Poles. As a child, I would visit both Eastern Orthodox churches, and Catholic churches, which are so related to each other, yet so different. Once in the primary school I heard a byname, "You, Lemko.” Lemko? Naturally, I had already known my ancestry. This teasing, disdainful tone stuck in my mind. Why? Were the Lemko roots something to be ashamed of? As it turned out, to some they were.
I abandoned the theme of my Lemko identity for many years. I would internalize it, rather than externalize it, unless someone asked. This was the case until the time of my doctorate, in which, by using portraits, I wanted to describe the experiences and the history of specific persons. It was then that I began to present the story of my grandfather, Piotr Kocur, with the painting "The History of My Grandfather, Piotr Kocur I,” among others. From the capture of my grandfather to a labour camp in Dresden, his resettlement in the Vistula Operation to a small town in the Recovered Territories. His individual story was also a common experience of thousands of people made leave their homeplace. Uprooted to a new reality, they slowly began to wither. The lost home became unconsciously the experience of the generations to follow.
From early childhood I have been hearing the story that “here” (in the Lower Silesia) we are not at home, that hidden somewhere is our Promised Land. I also saw the holdovers from the previous owners, the almost mythical Germans. Epitaphs on gravestones in German, the dilapidated palaces, World War I memorials, standing like monoliths of a collapsed civilization. The attempt to show my grandfather’s story absorbed me so much that half of my doctoral paintings are about him. This was a prelude to a painterly presentation of the dramatic fates of the Lemkos (e.g. the painting “On the Last Day of the World”), where I showed in the foreground a traditional Lemko marriage ceremony, costumes and everyday life, while in the background of that idyllic scene, the forced relocation of the Vistula Operation, is underway. Additionally, the image is enclosed in a frame with a poem by Jerzy Harasymowicz:
Who made that happen and what for?
Abandoned orchards now producing only clouds.
Empty houses that have yellowed with age,
being for so many years dismantled by our conscience.
Yesterday, as if unhorsing a casqued rider,
they tore down a church,
and just hide deeper in a dense thicket,
afraid to show the church their bearded faces. Fields have begun to overgrow with homeless grass.
Glory to our consciences, glory.
Dawid Zdobylak
(t/r AK)