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 My mother was an artist and Art was like blood running through her veins. She lived all her life for Art, in such a passionate way that took her to many places that only artists know in their dreams. She was an actress, a ballerina and a painter and knew fame and glory in Poland and Europe. When she met young Architect Zbigniew Solawa and became his wife, she gave birth to a little daughter Agnieszka. I was born in Krakow surrounded by art from the very first day and I grew up with my senses being trained every day to become an artist. I was not destined to be a painter because of my mother’s dreams. Not being able to play music herself, she started training me to be a pianist before I was two years old. Looking back, I think she was very proud to see her little girl perform in public for the first time at the age of two. Music did not keep the painter from emerging. When did I start painting? I can not recollect. Drawings, sketches and paint were part of my daily life, and it is not surprising when your mother is a painter and your father is an architect. I got my first commission of reverse paintings on glass at the age of ten; it was a collection of five icons for the “Missionary Church” in Krakow, a building designed and built by my father. Reverse painting on glass was and still is my favorite form of expression, which was implanted in me from my visits to the peasant homes in Zakopane in Tatra Mountains. The peasants, in their smoky homes, were lining their walls with such paintings portraying their Patrons and Saints, to bless them and protect them. In the dimmed lights of their living rooms, those painting were like shining stars in the middle of a summer’s night. I always wanted to own one of these glorious, shimmering paintings, but that was close to impossible. The peasants were very attached to those glass icons and the meaning they bear. It was a religious symbol and a matter of pride and social status. What the peasants did not own were only in museums and not for sale. The only way for me to own any painting on glass was to paint them myself. The rest is history. In 1961 I was confirmed by the Bishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla. Who could predict then that I would meet him again as Pope John Paul II in Rome many years later. I immigrated with my parents to South Africa to escape from communism. My father, who was then the Chief Architect of the city of Krakow and later a Professor at the School of Architecture, preferred to leave his beloved homeland in search of freedom for his family. A freedom, that was essential to his wife who was an artist and to his daughter who was growing up following the steps of her mother. It was not easy for my family to start a new life in a foreign land with a foreign language. I had to struggle in school while my father was struggling at work. To me he was a hero, leaving all his glory behind. He was forced to take the role of a draftsman after being an award-winning architect with monuments that carried and still carry his name, like the famous astronomical observatory in Silesia, Poland. I studied Fine Art at the Pretoria University and later gained my Diploma of Fine Art from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. During the years I was studying in Pretoria I kept painting and participating in Art Exhibitions. After completing my Art Diploma I attended the University of Cape Town School of Architecture to prepare for a career as an architect. It was during the second year of architecture the reward that every artist is waiting for came to me in the form of a solo exhibition in the Gallery of South African Association of Arts in Cape Town. I experienced the joys of displaying my collection of Reverse Paintings on Glass, Drawings and Graphics. In the fourth year of architecture, I traveled to France as part of my practical training. While working in Paris, at “Atelier Stephane Du Chateau”, the inventor of the space frames, as an intern and studying Graphic Arts at “Atelier 17”, under the patronage of Artist William Hayter, I organized my second Exhibition at “Circle Saint-Louis”, where I displayed my latest reverse paintings on glass.
For my final architectural thesis I chose to design an Interdenominational Church. The task was enormous (the thesis documents alone were more than 300 pages) and I was overworked thinking that I will never finish on time. Two weeks before the deadline I was barely getting enough sleep when around 2 o’clock in the morning I heard the news on the radio: “We have a new Pope and his name is Karol Wojtyla”. It was OctoberThat event in my time of despair showed me that everything is possible even for a frail girl like me who was still a student and yet working to pay for her schooling and help her parents make ends meet.
After graduating and while pursuing my architectural career I held several private non-publicized exhibitions in South Africa. In 1980 I won a Scholarship sponsored by the Italian Government to study Art and Italian language at the University of Urbino in Italy. I spent 18 months studying and working as an architect in the design firm Interstudio of Tokyo University’s Professor Yasuo Watanabe in Pesaro. To my greatest joy I was able to have an audience with Pope John Paul II. I took with me to the meeting my photographs from my Confirmation and showed it to him. The Pope recognized himself in the picture and his face beamed with a smile. He called Father Stanislaw Dziwisz , who is presently Archbishop of Krakow, and told him laughingly: ”Staszek look, how young I was then and I still was wearing eyeglasses (later he was wearing contacts). John Paul II asked me what was my name and, when I told him it is Solawa, he wondered if I am the daughter of his friend the architect Zbigniew Solawa who designed the winning project for the Church in Nowa Huta. The Pope wanted to know about my father, where he is now and what he is doing. Karol Wojtyla was famous for his phenomenal memory. To his question I replied that my father is and architect working in Cape Town, South Africa. John Paul smiled and made me promise that next time I will bring my father to see him.I was lucky while in Italy to be able to talk to him several times. The last time I saw him was after the tragic events in Poland when the martial law was imposed after 13 of December 1981. Italy was a great experience but I was missing my family and I decided to return to South Africa. There I resumed my career in architecture and thanks to my experience in Italy I was involved in the design of the extensions of the Johannesburg Art Gallery originally designed by Sir Edward Luytens in 1912. Several other projects were added to my portfolio such as the Museum Complex at Mosselbay in South Africa. Since I was a child I was fascinated by Cowboys and Indians and I was reading every book I could find on the subject. I was hoping that one day I would come to my dreamland. The inspiration and energy that I got from the Pope worked in my favor once again. In 1987 I realized my childhood dream and I came, alone, to the United States. Another foreign land and yet I finally felt at home. Having to work for a living was yet another challenge in my life that slowed my artistic career but never stopped it. I kept on painting while working at “Donghia Associates” as an architect/interior designer and later as an architect at the Port Authority of NY & NJ, where I participated in two of the Annual Art Exhibitions. I had several solo exhibitions and I participated in group shows in South Africa, France, Italy and the United States. In the summer of 2003 I returned to Poland, for the first time since I emigrated, to visit the places I love and miss so much. The voyage was an emotional walk through the past and an inspiration that reflects in my recent work. My mission as an artist is to introduce to the American Artists and Public the forgotten and sublime art of Reverse Painting on Glass, an art I was born into and lived with through my contacts with ancient Polish traditions that still lives in the villages and the mountains of my homeland.” |
