Kris Karewicz

"The painter of pictures with no faces..."

Krzysztof Karewicz paints with various techniques. He's a symbolist and colourist in painting and drawing.

The main characteristic of his painting is the lack of faces and facial expressions. He paints faces occasionally, but eyes and lips are always hidden. Karewicz is often called: "The painter of pictures with no faces".

He claims that the simplest form of showing emotions would be to paint a face, but that's what photographers are for. For him, a greater challenge is to show the situation, to convey the density of the atmosphere and the tension with gestures or body movements by avoiding showing faces. In addition to painting, he draws with charcoal, pencil and creates stone and metal forms.

In the 1970s, while searching for new tools and the trend of artistic expression, Krzysztof Karewicz invented the technique of drawing with charcoal: kontrarys (contra-drawing).
Karewicz creates charcoal drawings using his own contra-drawing technique (a name created by the artist himself). The series of drawings are encoded in the titles, such as: "Preludium", "Generic Motifs", "Legends", "Moniuszko", "Cracow's Legends" and more. Those works tell stories about real events, imagined situations or are based on Polish legends. After being transferred to cardboard, the stories are meant to inspire the viewers, stimulate their imagination and bring back memories.

Looking at Karewicz's works, it is safe to say that with his stories he devalues DARKNESS, FEAR and ANXIETY of human existence and death.

A Little Background - The Artist

Krzysztof Karewicz, born September 24, 1953 in Łódź is a Polish painter, colourist, symbolist, sculptor and draftsman. In addition to graphic design, painting and charcoal drawing in his own technique - Kontrarys - he deals with making stone and metal spatial forms by using the TIG welding technique. He is the son of Teresa Karewicz and Emil Karewicz, whose second passion apart from acting, was painting, and which influenced the interests of his son, Krzysztof.

Krzysztof Karewicz graduated from the State Secondary School of Fine Arts in Warsaw and the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Łódź with a Technician Decorator diploma. Later on he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and after graduating he became a lecturer at the Post-Secondary School of Advertising in Warsaw.
In his atelier in Saska Kępa, he prepared graduates for exams at art schools.