Exhibition by Professor Adam Brincken: “Landscape with Anxiety 2022/2025”

13 November 2025 – 6 January 2026

We invite you to an exhibition by Professor Adam Brincken, which is a kind of artistic war diary. However, it does not record events, but emotions. Through the language of art – abstract, non-obvious, full of nuances – the artist attempts to express and control the anxiety associated with war. The exhibition is curated by Anna Baranowa.

Opening: 13 November 2025, 18:18
Venue: ‘Pod Kruki’ Hall
Exhibition: Historic Cellars of the MCK
Opening hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 13.00 – 18.00


In the Historic Cellars of the MCK, Prof. Adam Brincken will present works that are a record of the anxiety associated with the events taking place beyond our eastern border. He will show over 200 works on paper and 20 object-paintings dedicated to the victims of the war in Ukraine. The artist began creating them when full-scale war broke out in 2022 and continues to do so today. Although he remained in his studio, he recorded the threat he felt.

As exhibition curator and art critic Anna Baranowa writes, Prof. Brincken creates a war diary – in his own way, using his own chosen means. However, it is not a record of the course of the fighting, nor a picture of people, animals or destroyed cities affected by the war. He observes the war in an indirect way, watching it on screen with sensitive involvement, recording emotions and expressing them in the language of abstraction. He uses oil pastels and pencil.

"He sketches successive pages with quick lines and zigzags, boldly applying expressive or blurred streaks and splashes of colour, pasting pieces of paper. Then he draws over it all with something sharp, leaving scratches and scrapes. In this way, the compositions take on even greater drama and spatiality. Nothing is literal or obvious, but one can guess at the strong emotions. The drawings form colourful constellations. There is mostly blue, red, black, earthy colours and grey (...) expressing his emotions about war, he did not stop at paper" – writes Anna Baranowa in her curatorial text “How to express war. Adam Brincken's attempt”.

The exhibition also presents several large-format object-paintings, including one triptych, created between 2023 and 2025. Their structure combines the element of painting with collage and objects, transcending the boundaries of the leading medium. Painted with quick strokes, cut in many places and then stitched together, they are combined with elements of gold and silver. The surface of the painting thus becomes multi-layered, reminiscent of wounds and crumbling ruins, depicting war, but in a completely non-obvious way.

Professor Adam Brincken has been associated with the Academy of Fine Arts for 55 years. He studied at the Faculty of Painting of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and continues to lecture at the Faculty of Painting and the Department of Art Education. The exhibition “Landscape with Anxiety 2022/2025” is the culmination of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the artist's creative work. The background for the presented works is Tadeusz Baird's Third Symphony.

Prof. Adam Brincken has also been a friend and collaborator of the ICC for many years. Among other things, he prepared the visual arrangement of the jubilee exhibition ‘Zbylut Grzywacz. Było nie było’ (2024), presented at our institution. In his artistic work, he deals with drawing, painting on the borderline of the object, stained glass, monumental painting in sacred spaces, and occasionally stage design. He also creates visual arrangements for exhibitions. He has exhibited his works in art galleries throughout Europe, as well as in the United States and Canada.

Exhibition curator: Anna Baranowa

Artistic design: Dr Anna Król, Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts

Honorary patronage:

Aleksander Miszalski – Mayor of Krakow

Prof. Andrzej Bednarczyk – Rector of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow

The Association of Polish Artist and Designers 

the Association of Art Historians Krakow


Organisers:

International Cultural Centre