THREE BATTLES: Cheronea 338 BC_Grunwald 1410_Austerlitz 1805

For Włodzimierz Jan Zakrzewski, abstraction is the real language of art. This shouldn’t come as a surprise given the fact that he was a disciple of Roman Owidzki and also knew Henryk Stażewski. Sometimes, however, the abstract form seemed insufficient for him and in this case he would come close to figurativeness, examining the space between them, searching for undescribed places. Three Battles inscribe in this strategy excellently. A homogeneous, bright background and, on it, a complicated pattern of crossed and multi-layered lines, arches, rectangles and arrows. Hence – an abstraction. But the title of the work gives us a hint that it is something more than that and promptly we discern a scheme of a battle in a classic sketch of an army’s tactical movements. Three to be exact – an ancient one (with the participation of the future Alexander the Great), a medieval one (the pogrom of the Teutonic Knights army in 1410), and a Napoleonic one (one of the greatest victories of the Little Emperor) - all being fought simultaneously on common ground. [A. Dzierżyc-Horniak