Good way to unite things

The exhibition of nearly 50 landscape paintings by Alfons Kulakowski entitled “From Here and There...” is the first event that will take place within the framework of the Partnership Festival, to be held in mid September in Lviv.

The opening ceremony was attended by the head of the Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry Office in Lviv Oblast Viacheslav Voinarovsky, the Deputy Marshal of Warmia and Mazury Province Anna Wasylewska, Consul of the Republic of Poland in Lviv Martin Zinevych, artists, and art critics. “I happy that I was born in Ukraine, I am happy to be a Polish man, and I am happy because through art I combine Poland and Ukraine,” said 86-year-old Alfons Kulakowski on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition and then concluded: “Art is a good way to unite things.”

Life of Alfons Kulakowski (born in 1927) was, unfortunately, rather typical and tragic like the lives of many of his peers. He was born in the village of Osykove near Berdychev. When he was less than two years old the NKVD arrested his father. Later the family was stripped of their home and were sent into exile in Siberia (village of Bakchar, 300 kilometers away from Tomsk), where the Kulakowski family, according to Alfons, was the only Polish family. “Five of father’s brothers, mother’s brother and father also tragically died (were shot) there,” said Kulakowski. “That is why, at the age of 17 I decided to escape from the drudgery fate...” From there Alfons travelled dawn to Kazakhstan, where his brother Mieczyslaw lived at that time...

In 1945-52 Kulakowski studied in Alma-Ata. The first solo exhibition of Kulakowski was also held in the capital of Kazakhstan. It was organized by the local Union of Artists. Later he had exhibitions in Moscow, Leningrad, Samara, Kazan, Saratov, and other cultural centers of the USSR. He was a member of the Union of Artists, chief artist of the Art Fund, and also served as rector of the Advertising School in Samara. Together with his brother Mieczyslaw Alfons built a house in Alma-Ata, which was called the Polish home, because people from the world of diplomacy, culture, and art often met there.

Kulakowski came to Poland in 1997. There together with his brother he lives in an old school with a studio arranged on the second floor. Today he is one of the most renowned Polish artists, who exhibited his art work in different countries. A few years ago there was a fire in his home in Poland, which destroyed nearly 6,000 of his paintings, hundreds of sketches, books, CDs, and correspondence... However, Kulakowski does not get disappointed despite his bitter fate – he continues to paint, finding solace in creative work, he travels whenever he can, and participates in the artistic life. The artist presents his work for the first time in Lviv. He is looking forward to new exhibitions, including the ones to be held in Kyiv.