Jan Dobkowski rejected textural solutions stemming from post-impressionism while he was still studying. He eliminated the painterly space from the painting, filling the surface of the canvas with large flat fields of lightly applied colour. He limited the colour range to two contrasting complementary colours — red and green — which he considered to be the colours of life. The line outlining the shapes flows in restless, meandering turns, creating Art Deco-like decorative arrangements. Despite deformation and exaggeration of forms, the paintings are subjective rather than abstract. The repertoire of repeating motifs includes, among others, multiplied breasts with heavily marked nipples, heads with strands of hair resembling flames, human skeletons, hearts, sperm, and embryonic shapes. The human form is not superior to other elements of the compositions — all the organisms remain equal and mutually entangled. The hierarchical division into the human and the non-human is abolished. Arrangements of soft shapes express symbolic content: an elemental wonder of life and a sense of oneness with nature constantly undergoing change.

In the mid-1970s, the human figure vanished from Dobkowski’s paintings, leaving only a dynamic line, flowing through the space in waves or in soft, irregular arcs. Dobkowski began to use paints with mixed colours — deeper and darker. In the painting My River II, thick lines run diagonally towards the centre of the painting, creating a current of flowing water. Instead of the spontaneity typical of the artist’s previous phase, a mood of concentration emerges. There is a palpable quiet, pensive existential reflection in these paintings.

Ewa Skolimowska, translated by Paulina Bożek