“Painting and drawing were my youthful passion. Originating in romantic haze and heroic drum-beat, they were on trial at Strzeminski’s rational school, tasted the sacrilegious poetical character of dadaism, made difficult attempts to dialogue with reality and retreated to the trenches of chamber lyricism and deep inside dark woods in moments of despair and failure. With the passage of time and when I widened my professional activity, ‘pure’ painting had to absorb the matter of other experiences and digest it with various effects. I often experience the state of ‘accelerated thinking’, when thoughts are quicker than the words to formulate them. Certain abbreviations, condensation, symbols and systems can be successfully recorded and conveyed in an iconographic way. And although the real vanguard, as young critics say, is beyond the limits of forms to be seen and uses the matter of ideas as freely as Beuys uses his hat, I still feel sorry to say good-bye to the word ‘painting’ that has accompanied us for such a long period of time and in such a faithful way.”

Andrzej Strumiłło — The Catalogue, Zacheta, 1976