Andrew STROKA (b. 1953), The Promise, 2014

oil, canvas; 100 x 81 cm;
Signed and dated: Stroka 14 (in circle) / STROKA;
On the back author's description: "OBIETNICA" / ANDRZEJ / STROKA / 21.04.2014 / W

He does painting, drawing, applied graphics, designs and arranges exhibitions. He studied painting in the studio of Prof. Stanislaw Batruch in Cracow. Co-owner of Gallery of Graphics and Posters in Warsaw.
Designed and co-published albums about the creators of the Polish School of Poster: "Franciszek Starowieyski, Year 1699", "Jan Młodożeniec", "Waldemar Świerzy". He cooperates with many publishing houses, most recently designed the album "Casa di Stasys" (diaries and works of Stasys Eidrigevicius) for the State Publishing Institute. He has designed many art publications for Museums (most recently for the Wilanów Museum, the Wilanów Poster Museum) and Art Exhibition Offices in Poland.
Since 1981, he has organized and arranged dozens of exhibitions of Polish art at home and abroad by such artists as Józef Wilkoń, Stanisław Rodziński, Stasys Eidrigevicius, Jan Młodożeniec, Franciszek Starowieyski, Jan Cybis, Jan Trasin, Edward Dwurnik, Jerzy Duda-Gracz, Wojciech Fangor, Teresa Pągowska, Tadeusz Dominik, among others.
He participated in exhibitions of Polish art in Budapest, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Greece, England, USA. Works in state and private collections in Poland, Germany, Denmark, France, Italy, USA, Switzerland, Mexico, Canada, England, Kuwait. Since 1993, he stopped presenting his works in solo exhibitions.

"Later, he slowly began to introduce elements that stimulate reflection, contemplative perception, and this probably coincides with the discovery of the model called. "Dziunia", that is, his wife. Sometimes it is still a solitary figure , but already treated more spatially and already with traces of an atmosphere of intimacy. Dziunia begins to individualize and looking at a larger series of images, as if chapters of a story, which all
together form a complete portrait of a person. There is also a transformation in the color scheme. He began bright, "noisy", now reduces the means of expression deepening the action on quiet tones. In recent works, these changes are already very clear and, I believe, the artist is starting a new stage, without losing anything of what he has accumulated in his previous work. It is all the time the way of figuration, he also constantly uses photography, but now it serves him differently. At the moment he has subordinated it completely to himself like paint - from being almost an equal partner of painting it has become a mere servile element."
(Tadeusz Dominik)