Jerzy Świecimski

Born in 1927 in Warsaw. After the Warsaw uprising in 1944 he moved to Cracow. There he graduated in natural sciences at the Jagiellonian University, as a M.Sc. in zoology. At the same time he was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he graduated in 1956, awarded the diploma in illustration of books, particularly the historical and scientific ones. He started his work in the Museum of Natural History of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Then his interests directed to museum works, philosophy and theory of art. His Ph.D. Thesis, written under Roman Ingarden's supervision was devoted to the theory of scientific illustration. The series of his travels started with the scientific scholarship at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh in 1967, got for gathering materials to museum studies. In 1976 he presented the Sc.D. Thesis on the theory of museum exhibition. Then he published numerous papers on museum work and on the artistic presentation of scientific exhibitions in Poland, Europe and USA. He was teaching the basis of museum exhibition work for the students of the Postgraduate Studies in Museum Works at the Jagiellonian University, at the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruh and at the Warsaw University. Since 1992 he has worked as a retired professor in humanities at the Jagiellonian University. Along with the theoretical works he has been dealing with design of museum exhibitions, but the artistic creation has been his primary concern, continuously since 1956. His exhibitions were rare but he has offered many works to the collections of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Scientific Station of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Paris, the University of Fribourg, and the Philosophy Department of the Jagiellonian University. In 1982 he exhibited abroad for the first time. He has been dealing with the landscape, interpreted more as the synthetic „abstraction" and with the „internal" landscape, reflecting the world of his emotions and far from the observations of the „nature". Although he is close to the philosophy of the positivism, his art includes some sacral works too. He is a member of ICOM (International Council of Museums).
Died 21 of september 2012.