Painter, graphic designer and illustrator. He was born in Cracow in 1957. In 1976 Jacek Sroka began his studies at the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. He chose Mieczyslaw Wejman’s copperplate studio as his main specialty, plus drawing under Adam Hoffman and painting under Jan Świderski. This mixture of authorities and various inspirations helped him choose his artistic path, in which metaphorical thinking and intellectual analysis were enriched by expressive, but always color-sensitive form .He received his diploma in the Copperplate Studio of Prof. Mieczyslaw Wejman, in 1981. From1981 to 1990, he was an assistant at the Faculty of Graphic Arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In 2018, he taught a course in printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University in Beijing. From 2014 – 2018 co-founded the Graphic Arts Center in Nantong, China.
He has exhibited paintings and prints in one hundred and twenty solo shows ( including Krakow, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Maastricht, San Francisco, Vienna, Lyon, Curitiba, Beijing) and several hundred group shows in Poland and around the world.
Retrospective museum exhibitions: Musee Des Beaux Arts,Chambery, France, 1995; Musee d’Ussel, France, 2005; National Museum in Krakow, 2008; Kunstverein Offenburg, Germany, 2008; National Museum, Przemyśl, 2011; Museum of the Lubuska Land, Zielona Góra, 2011; Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil, 2013; Upper Silesian Museum, Bytom 2017.
The artist’s works are in museum collections in Poland ( e.g. National Museum in Cracow, L. Wyczółkowski District Museum in Bydgoszcz, Upper Silesia Museum, Bytom; Museum of Art, Lodz; Museum of Contemporary Art, Radom, Jagiellonian Library,Cracow; Graphic Collections of PAU, Cracow ) and in the world ( e.g. Metropolitan Museum, New York; Graphishe Sammlung Albertina, Vienna; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Musee Savoisien, Chambery; Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque National de France, Paris; Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Utsunomiya; Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba; Ningbo Art Museum, Ningbo) and numerous private collections.
The artist has won prizes and awards at the Mulhouse Biennale of Graphics (1984), the Toronto International Exhibition of Miniatures (1986), Graphica Atlantica in Reykjavik (1987), the Vaasa Biennale of Graphics (1987), the Grand Prix at the Seoul Biennale of Graphics (1988), the I.Trybowski Prize at the International Triennale of Graphics in Cracow (1994 ), among others.
Nominated for the “Polityka” Passport in 1996; winner of the Witold Wojtkiewicz Award (2001); awarded the Bronze Medal “Gloria Artis” (2016), the Vive l’Art Medal (2019) awarded by the ZPAP Kraków District and the Medal of the 100th Anniversary of Regained Independence (2024). He is a member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022).
Jack Sroka style
He is a keen observer of reality and vividly, yet perversely, describes it. Although the vision of the world and reflections on the twisted nature of the human psyche that emerge from his works are bitter, they are sweetened by pastiche and irony. The artist views reality through the prism of the grotesque and tames it with distance and layers of black humor. The sources of this art, as well as the specificity of Jacek Sroka’s imagination, should be sought primarily in the Cracow school of graphic art firmly anchored in the tradition of Witkacy or Roman Jaworski. This school also drew on the writings of Franz Kafka and pre-war expressionist theater – idyll collided in it with horror, and pathos with vulgarity and perversion.
Individual exhibitions
2024
2023
2022
2021
2019
2018
2017
2015
2014
