Adam Styka is an author of paintings, drawings, and graphic art. Born in 1940 in Mielnica, Poland, he studied at the State Higher School of Plastic Arts in Łódź under Professor Marian Jaeschke. He graduated with distinction in 1965. Currently, he is a professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin (Arts Faculty), and leads the painting course for students of graphic design at the Warsaw School of Information Technology since 2010. He has had 35 solo shows and participated in over 200 collective exhibitions of Polish art at home and abroad (Austria, Argentina, Belgium, France, Iraq, Germany, Mexico, Russia, the USA, the UK, Hungary, Italy). He is a recipient of the Audience Award of the Symposium of Visual Artists and Academics (Puławy, Poland 1966), individual award of the Ministry of Culture and Art (Poland 1977), Premio Internazionale Apollo Musagete (Talla, Italy 1985), honourable mention at the 21st International Painting Festival in Cagnes-sur-Mer (France, 1989), individual award of the first degree from the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2002), artistic grants from the Polish Ministry of Culture and Art (1968, 1984, 1986, 1989), and a year-long artistic grant from the Society for Arts of Chicago (2004). In 2012 he was presented with the Silver and in 2019 the Golden Gloria Artis Medal for Services to Culture (Poland). His works are held by the National Museum's branches in Kraków, Przemyśl, Szczecin, Warsaw, and Wrocław; Mondriaanhuis in Amersfoort; regional museums in Chełm and Koszalin; Lublin Museum; Museum of Architecture in Wrocław; Museums of the Academies of Fine Arts in Warsaw and Wrocław; North Mazovian Museum in Łomża; Museum of Talla; Studio Art Centre in Warsaw; Mazovian Centre of Culture and Art in Warsaw; Elektrownia Mazovian Centre of Contemporary Art in Radom; Society for Arts in Chicago; Art Exhibition Bureaus in Jelenia Góra, Lublin, Rzeszów, Sandomierz, Szczecin, and Warsaw; Contemporary Art Galleries in Ostromecko and Garwolin; and private collections in Poland and abroad.
From the exhibition catalogue:
The painter has always paid a lot of attention to the matters of composition. The arrangement of elements in his paintings from different periods is well-thought-out, based on proportional relationships which – as a rule – create the effect of calm, stability, and lucidity. Adam Styka is interested in basic forms, that is the square, circle, triangle, rectangle. He uses them to organise the surface, divide up the painting, assign weight to its different sections, and designate its centre and peripheries.
Piotr Majewski