Stani Nitkowski 
Presentation
Although struck by muscular dystrophy and nailed down to a wheel chair since the age of 23, Nitkowski painted both on canvas and on paper a tremendous hymn to life, full of spite and dazzling passion. His poetry, a mixture of farce and humor often oversteps tragedy is plainly overwhelming. He decided of his own death in 2001, leaving behind a body of work of extreme clarity.
Stani Nitkowski : a few landmarks
Born in 1949. Fter a short period in abstraction, he starts drawing with ink; his first public appearance is in 1974. Following Jean Dubuffet’s advice, he meets with Cérès Franco who will welcome him in her gallery on many occasions. At the same time Roland Vanuxem becomes his dealer. In 1993, the Niort Museum dedicates to the artist a retrospective show “Twenty years of painting”.
Biography
Personal Exhibitions
2006
" Parcours", galeries idées d'artistes, Vanuxem et Sellem, Paris
2003
"Le grand bond" Salle Chemellier, Angers
"Nitkowski, dessins", Le coral, Aymargues
2002
"La lucarne magique", galerie idées d'artistes, Paris
Art Paris, galerie Vanuxem
Galerie Vanuxen, Paris
Halle Saint-Pierre, Paris
2001
"Hommage" Artmetz (Metz)
Salon Comparaisons, Paris
Galerie Lillebonne, Nancy
Hommage à Stani Nitkowski, Galerie idées d’artistes, Paris,
1999
Entre chair et corps, Galerie Les Filles du calvaire, Paris
1996
"Œuvres récentes", galerie Vanuxem, Paris 1995 Huiles et dessins récents, Galerie Vanuxem, Paris
1993
Rétrospective, Musée de Niort, Niort
Dessins, Galerie Vanuxem, Paris
1992
Hôtel de Ville, La Pouèze
1991
Petites peintures et dessins de Ecrit avec ton propre sang, Galerie L'œil de bœuf, Paris
1990
"15 ans d'acquisition", musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes
1990
Œuvres récentes, Galerie Vanuxem, Paris
1989
Galerie Convergence, Paris
"La forga", galeries Vanuxem-Biaf, Paris
Galerie l'Oeil de Bœuf, Paris
Galerie Patricia Personne, Angers
1988
"Marche ou crève", Galerie Convergence, Nantes
1987
Galerie Vanuxem, Paris
Galerie L'œil de bœuf, Paris
Carnet de dessins et peintures, Galerie Aussant, Rennes
1986
Maison de la culture, Rennes
Galerie B. Jagot, Saint-Nazaire
Maison de l'avocat, Nantes
"Two men show", avec B.A. Koller, FIAC, galerie Jagot, Lausanne
1985
Œuvres récentes, Galerie Vanuxem, Paris
"Atelier sur l'herbe", Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Nantes
1984
Chapelle du Genetail, Château-Gontier
1982
"Les sentiers privilégiés de ma vie", Galerie L'œil de bœuf, Paris
1981
Galerie Janick, Laval
1980
Etrange Musée Robert Tatin, Cossé-le-Vivien
1978
Gendarmerie, La Rochelle
Syndicat d'Initiative, Chalonnes
1976
Abbaye, Saint-Georges-sur-Loire
1975
Caveaux de l'Abbaye à Saint-Georges-sur-Loire
1974
Première exposition, Angers
Collections
Université de Montréal, Canada
Etablissement public du Parc de la Villette, Paris
Site de la création franche, Bègles
Musée de Laval
FRAC Pays de Loire
Artothèque, Nantes
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes
Collection Cérès Franco, Lagrasse (Aude)
Publications
"Nicogrammes" galerie Jacques, 1983
Plaquette, galerie Vanuxem, 1985
Plaquette, éditions Atelier sur l'herbe, 1985
Plaquette, éditions Maison de l'avocat, 1986
Catalogue, éditions galerie Vanuxem, 1987
"Carnet de dessins" éditions Aussant, 1988
Catalogue, éditions galerie Vanuxem, 1990
"Ecrit avec son propre sang" P. Dukan, 1994
Catalogue, Hôtel de Ville La Pouëze, 1992
Catalogue "20 ans de peinture" éditions Musée Niort, 1993
Catalogue "Entre chair et corps", galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, 1999
Catalogue "Stani Nitkowski" édition Hors Série Cimaise, 1999
Numéro spécial Artémoin, éditions Artémoin, 2001
Catalogue "Stani Nitkowski" éditions Halle Saint-Pierre, 2002
"La mansarde à lucarne magique", Deleatur, idées d'artistes, 2002
Monographie, éditions de l'abbaye d'Auberive, 2006
Free speech
Press
Stani Nitkowski,
His life, written with black ink, infinitely drawn, incised, names the hard desire to exist. In one of his intimate diaries, he says: "Miscellaneous :on this day of May 1949, the 29 to be more precise, I was, at the crossroads of existence, mown by death as I was about to rove on the edge of life, the ditches then became the bed to rest my body on ". And many pages further, " the law of most dead is always the watcher " (spoonerism from the French “La loi du plus mort est toujours le veilleur”). As a biography, no more needs to be said. Stani Nitkowski, born on the smoking debris of the Second World war, will commit suicide, at the beginning of the century, April 2, 2001. Son of a miner father of Polish extraction, he will have lived from the age of 23 nailed in a wheelchair, following a myotonic dystrophy. By compassion, one offers him an occupation, tubes of colours, pencils and paper, which leads him to show his work, in 1973, for the first time in a supermarket, then to meet Robert Tatin, baker, geometrician, sculptor and builder patriarch of Outsider Art. Each one helps the other, Tatin advises the young invalid to escape, to lay down on a paper bed the dead load : “draw, draw and you will see more clearly”. But let us not confuse this filiation, Nitkowski is not the epigone of an art circle called “Outsider ”, which is unaware of himself, federated by Jean Dubuffet. Autodidact, he seeks a spiritual family, devours the art books, pins postcards from everywhere in his workshop. And although he is received coldly by Dubuffet, who is distracted and elsewhere, he becomes the volcanic and enraged artist, scholar and brilliant, who will seduce the painter Corneille, the critic of art Jean-Marie Drot, the merchants Cérès Franco and Vanuxem, in Paris, and benevolent collectors. What they discover in echo is the history of a stimulating tragedy, which turns the obsession of death into an incredible novel of survival. Since 1981, Nitkowski makes his way alone, snatches the colours of Primitive Italians, the paste of Van Gogh, steals a little from Maryan, copies the heroic figures, creates a little circus, slightly pathetic and reveals his own art. Little by little, he invents his language by leaving the childhood of art. His paintings, from 1988, become more complex, superimposing in their composition the figures and the bodies of a gigantic and carnivorous farce, as the drawing imposes itself, by scratches and scars, in its pictorial work. It seems that the mark is used as a nerve, spinal column, blood and flux irrigating the large body that paint is. One is never far from automatic writing, of a exhilarating pulsation of an astonishing invention. This expressionist who is neither urban nor social, shows the chronicle of the body that disintegrates, of the body in fall, the body that levitates, or is wished for. This obstinate vitality, so off-hand in a time when abundance is suspect, results in hundreds of drawings, produces each day witty texts and even rarer and more ambitious paintings. With time, the work, in spite of a recognition due to many personal shows, seems to retract, entrust to the black the blackness of an exhausting dissatisfaction. Ultimate paintings, that converse with the blind light of Goya and quotes the destiny of Christ. His paintings have the colour of the ground. The materiality of ash. All becomes diffused, allegorical, basic, and yet increasingly tangible to all who want to see it : Nitkowski digs a bed of painting which seems like a shroud; and the shade that covers the clearness of its fabrics indicates the absence, the transfiguration, and perhaps the respite. A life, so confused, so absurd, so resistant, so merry and so disastrous. So true, also, of a man who writes, somewhere on a bit of paper, under the border of a drawing, these words: "Would this be a dream, dared, to confess, on the mouths, my hope to be..."
Laurent Boudier
