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The piece from the Okna series is one of the spatial structures built by Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz in the 1960s, inspired by geometric forms and metal as a sculptural material that opens up new artistic opportunities. Art historian Waldemar Baraniewski described his installations made of welded sheet metal and rods as things that become stimulators of new, hitherto unknown spaces and phenomena, all while being internally balanced in some wonderful manner. These works, initially expressive and metaphorical, which over time grew increasingly analytical and rational, constitute the most important part of Jarnuszkiewicz’s rich and varied oeuvre. Created in just a few years, they are a unique phenomenon in Polish art. The first piece in the Kompozycje przestrzenne series was made in a public place during a sculpture symposium in Ravne in former Yugoslavia (1964). Another piece went up during the first Biennial of Spatial Forms in Elbląg (1965), where his Konstrukcja drogowskazowa won the grand prix. In many cases, the artist created smaller object with the view to making them in a larger scale. In 1967 the American curator Edward F. Fry selected his Rytmy II for the Sculpture of Twenty Nations exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.Jarnuszkiewicz was a versatile artist and a gifted sculptor. He created medals, ex-libris, graphics and monuments. For several decades, he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he taught sculpture according to his original curriculum. His basic educational premise was to encourage students to think independently, to open up to their own emotions and the surrounding reality. The list of his outstanding students includes Grzegorz Kowalski, who developed Jarnuszkiewicz's original pedagogical method in his studio – the now legendary Kowalnia. Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz is the author of the Monument to the Little Insurgent in Warsaw, which is a symbol of remembrance of the Warsaw Uprising.

Marlena Chybowska-Butler