Maria Wnęk (15 June 1922 – 12 April 2005) was born in Olszynka near Stary Sącz to a large peasant family. As a teenage girl, she found her first employment in a company regulating the Dunajec river. Afterwards she would help with the farm work but would use every available spare moment to engage it what she saw as her sole purpose in life. She eagerly engaged in prayer, took part in church services, pilgrimages and church fairs. The extent of her devoutness surprised even her closest family. Other villagers nicknamed her “manijok” [maniac]. Her neighbours were also very critical of her ability to manage the small plot of land inherited form the parents and often brought up her social awkwardness resulting from her being “different”. In 1960, she suffered an accident and was forced to retire and live of a disability pension. Luckily, in that period her path crossed with that of Ewa Harsdorf who organised the artistic circle at the community centre in Nowy Sacz. She was 40 years old at the time. The support and understanding she discovered in that new environment drove Maria Wnęk to eagerly pursue education in the ins and outs of painting. She quickly developed a unique style, which attracted the attention of fellow artists, art critics, and collectors. Then came the first exhibitions and commissions. She treated painting as a way to escape her mundane reality marked by the stigma of mental disease and social rejection. Her artistic work was seen as a mission which, in her eyes, had come straight from God himself. Art also provided her with a way to commune with the saints who visited and protected her, but also with a way to communicate with the real world, to spread the word of God. In her paintings she expressed her concerns, talked about harm suffered from people whom she believed to actively act against her efforts to warship God, who persecuted her, even tried to take her life.
She painted on whatever was on hand at the moment, using a variety of paints.
The characteristic sharp contours were done in pencil, crayon or paint. Her favourite image was that of the Virgin and Child, her chosen patrons. Other works also depicted scenes for the artist’s life in which real events tended to be almost indistinguishable from imaginary ones. Her actual, personal experience was presented in full symbiosis with the world of the spiritual. An important element of her works was constituted by the “biographies”, usually written down on the reverse side of her works, which included e.g. spiritual guidance, messages from Heaven, complaints, and opinions. She often described herself as a “painter famous around the world”.
The artist spent her twilight years at the J. Babiński Hospital in Kraków-Kobierzyn and in her native Olszynka, under the care of Irena and Wojciech Piast.
Maria Wnęk Feeds the Animals
A medium-size painting, 45 x 65 cm, in water paint. A primitivistic depiction of a number of figures: on the left, taking up roughly half of the painting, are the figures of Jesus and the Holy Mother, on the right, a number of four legged animals with humanoid heads. Towards the bottom, on the right, there is also a figure of a woman wearing a brown scarf with birds flying merrily around her. All the human and animal shapes are painted with a brown contour and yellow paint. The animals are brown, white, yellowish-brown and yellow. Two of the four creatures seem to be dogs, each with three white and yellow spots on their bodies. The painting’s background is a uniform dark blue. The sky seems to have been painted somewhat hastily with white paper showing through in places and brush strokes clearly discernible. The author placed white hearts on the chests of Jesus and the Holy Mother.
Podmalówka i stalówka II
Marcina Wrzal rysuje na białym papierze średniej wielkości. Swoje rysunki przeważnie komponuje w poziomie. Prac swoich nie tytułuje. Wykonuje je za pomocą szkicu ołówkiem, następnie pokrywa czarnym narzędziem, tuszem, cienkopisem, flamastrem. Bardzo często na skończonym już rysunku pozostawia ślad ołówka – nie usuwa go gumką. Formy które przedstawia Wrzal są bliżej nieokreślone, możemy tylko się domyślać albo i nie, co przedstawiają. Na tym rysunku są jakby gałęzie pomiędzy którymi ukryte są oczy lub przeplata się dłoń ludzka. Typowym zjawiskiem dla prac Marcina Wrzala jest pozostawianie dużo białej przestrzeni. Artysta rysuje jakby oszczędnie, ascetycznie, rysuje tylko to co dla niego niezbędne. Autor prawie zawsze sygnuje swoje prace ta wyjątkowo nie jest podpisana.
