posted on 08 Jun 2017

Adrian Wiszniewski  by Alex Kidson

Adrian Wiszniewski was a new name to me before I came across Alex Kidson’s beautifully produced introduction to his work. Born in 1958 and a student at the Mackintosh School of Architecture and then the Glasgow School of Art, he had something of meteoric rise in his reputation during the 1980s when his name became synonymous with what became known as the ‘New Glasgow Boys’  - a school of young artists who have been described in this way by  The Essential School of Painting:

The New Glasgow Boys were a new generation of bold, young figurative painters who all studied at The Glasgow School of Art in the 1980s, producing work on a heroic scale often taking their subject matter from working class Scotland. They went on to achieve national and international success and helped ignite the revival in figurative art in Scotland at a time when American Abstraction, Pop and conceptual art dominated western art. 

His sudden rise to fame opened a number of important opportunities for him and in 1985 his painting were being purchased by the Tate Gallery and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Between1986-87 he became  the artist in residence at Liverpool’s Walker Gallery

Wiszniewski’s paintings  are extraordinary canvasses  that feel like short stories in their own right. Many of them have complex narratives whilst others are reflective, even elegiac.  The range of influences that tumble into his work is remarkable – there are echoes here of Picasso, Leger, Matisse, Stanley Spencer – but I also get a feel for something almost Pre-Raphaelite, something essentially romantic and fantastical from the past.

Kidson’s very good introduction to Wiszniewski’s work stresses the fact that the artist is far more than just a painter and that he has always struggled to avoid being typecast or stereotyped. He is also interested in print making, sculpture and public art installations -  his decoration of the Goma Café for example. But for me the work that speaks most directly to my own sensibility remains  the paintings.  As Kidson rightly says, Wiszniewski’s style, while it evolved, hasn’t fundamentally undergone significant change. I can see some clear parallels here with the paintings of that other Scottish iconoclast, Alasdair Gray, because there is a very strong graphic or even illustrative tendency in his work.

I have never seen an exhibition of his work although there are canvasses in some of the public art galleries. The attributions on the  reproductions in this book also suggest however that a good number have disappeared into private collections or are still owned by the painter himself. I don’t know if any curators out there are looking around for inspiration for their next exhibition but they could do a whole lot worse than pulling together something to showcase this artist.

Kidson’s book is a perfect starting point if you want to see a good spread of what Wiszniewski is capable of and the prints faithfully protect the vibrancy of the colours crucial to an appreciation of the paintings. Copies of the book can be picked up on the second hand market for between £10 - £15 and so getting to know this painter better shouldn’t break the bank.

 

Terry Potter

June 2017