Prof. Andrzej Klimczak-Dobrzaniecki
Excerpts from the review of my habilitation thesis, 2005.
“Despite changes over time, her painting gives the impression of persistence and consistence in its ideas. We will not notice any sudden shifts in it, abrupt transformations, revolutions. It flows calmly, with its own proper, consistent rhythm. Anna Sławkowska-Rode in her practice adopts the attitude of an insightful analyst for whom the very act of creating a painting seems to be more and more a fact beyond rational action. However, these contradictions – concerning procedures intended to introduce order (increasing rhythmization and geometrization of the composition) and those pertaining to emotions (characteristic softening of this geometry) – are apparent. The former stem from her conviction that it is possible to artistically depict the order that governs all the phenomena that surround us, not only material ones (the work of art becomes a visible sign of this), while the latter – according to the artist herself – proves that the very act of creation has something extrasensory in it. Like a lens, it focuses all feelings and emotions associated with this aspect of creation that is not subject to reason and cool calculation.”(…)
“In one of his critical texts, Prof. Jacek Sempoliński used a phrase that aptly describes Anna Sławkowska-Rode’s painting, namely that she pursues ‘pure’ or ‘disinterested’ painting. In this way, he drew attention to the shift of focus from ‘the area of the metaphysics of the object and narrative’ to the area of ‘the metaphysics of material’ and ‘the metaphysics of painting itself.’ According to him, it is tantamount to the desire to expose not only the physicality of the painting, but equally its ideological, intellectual and perhaps even spiritual layer. This is difficult, of course. But looking at the artist’s paintings, listening to her elucidations and reading her statements, we have the impression that this is the path she once chose and has consistently followed for years.”(…)
“Her paintings, unambiguous in color intent, at times seemingly cool and ‘calculated,’ exemplify the rejection of external decorativeness and the abandonment of any narrative. Constructed from simple, basic elements, they form equally simple, elementary arrangements. The indisputable strength of Anna Sławkowska-Rode’s painting comes from the fact that it is able to ignite our imagination and lead to multi-level associations. These associations are very diverse, sometimes surprising. Despite being encoded in a purely painterly cipher, they bring to mind information about the real world and about its hypothetical order, which can only be intuited by us. These areas of creativity that are connected with deep reflection, hardly subject to any verbalization, are the artist’s main field of interest.”(…)
Prof. Jacek Dyrzyński
Excerpts from the review of my habilitation thesis, 2005.
(…) “She studied painting in the studio of Professor Rajmund Ziemski. She has always referred to her Professor with the utmost respect, as a man and an artist, but the maestro’s unique expression was not compatible with her psyche. She wanted to create her own formula of expression. She did paintings, built rationally according to her private semantics and a recurring pattern. Inspiration was provided by the landscape, often highly geometric, whose fragments she tried to reproduce in sequences depicting small, repetitive elements.”(…)
“The simplified patterns fit in perfectly with the artist’s increasingly beloved compositional element – the square. As a figure, it is alien to nature outside of crystallography, but once cogitated by man – it became a symbol of reason. I think that this fact, and not only the visual characteristics of the figure in which each side plays the same role, determined its recurrent presence on her canvases. Surrounding the central composition by a square border is a kind of tautology, reinforcing the final effect of calm, order and unequivocal decisiveness.
She sometimes divides her squares into fields and paints in stripes. With their static obviousness, they provoke her to find dynamic visual actions in this difficult field. She loves the colors of the earth, which is why – despite various speculations concerning the division of the plane – we associate her paintings with landscape, seen from different perspectives.”(…)
“Recently, she has been creating more elaborate arrangements – single works become combinatorial elements of larger wholes and, through the contingencies of various summations, offer almost unlimited possibilities for the final presentation.”(…)
“The recurrent symmetry is, I think, also an expression of respect for nature, whose living forms are almost always symmetrical.”(…)
Prof. Henryk Hoffman
Excerpts from a review of my habilitation thesis, 2005.
(…) “Her painting, although uniform and consistent, when viewed over time is subject to a certain evolution. Works from 1990–1995 are multicolored and expressive. The dense structures of her painting, woven from colorful elements of various sizes, often interpenetrate each other, maintaining a sensitive spontaneity despite their clearly hierarchical internal order.”(…)
“In most cases, the composition is open-ended, but the proposals contained therein give a sense of purposefulness, coherence, order and harmony. In some works, it is possible to discern a kind of internal frame that arbitrarily encloses the composition, or additional dynamic divisions of the field into enclaves, which, linked by an overarching order, constitute a varied compositional whole. The second half of the 1990s and later years bring a gradual calming down. Color takes on a more refined character, and the composition of the paintings stabilizes. The divisions of the canvas into coexisting zones are more and more clearly marked, the number and shape of the employed elements, often reduced to vertical or horizontal rhythms, become more concrete. Rhythm, by the way, accompanies all of Anna Rode’s work. Spontaneous and expressive at first, it gradually becomes calmer, being not so much an organizing rule, but the goal of most compositions. Later works (paintings and drawings), especially those created after 2000, are already sublime, thoroughly rhythmical structures with a limited range of colors, often with a central or symmetrical composition. In these works, space is the subject of an internal game of forms and tensions that builds the dynamics of the image. Color, which is far from being neglected by the artist and which constitutes one of the strengths of her painting, seems to be subordinated to the same aim.
As I mentioned earlier, over the years color seems to have undergone a certain reduction, becoming more noble and less expressive. It is clear that the artist’s practice has been moving towards a mature synthesis, accompanied by restraint and a conscious reduction of the means of expression.”(…)
“Her maturity and originality is manifested, among other things, in the laboratory search for the pure sound of rhythmic chords.”(…)