M HKA Ensembles

1938 - 1994

Died in Krakow (Poland), born in Krakow (Poland).

Krzysztof Niemczyk was a writer, self-taught painter and musician whose formal education ended in primary school. Although he was forgotten for a long time, he has been rediscovered in recent years due to publication of his novel Kurtyzana i Pisklęta (The Courtesan and the Chicks). In the second half of the 1960s he was closely associated with the community of the Cricot 2 theatre of Tadeusz Kantor, the Krzysztofory Kraków gallery, and the Foksal gallery in Warsaw. In the memory of many participants of Kraków’s artistic life (as well as the environment of the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw), Niemczyk was, above all, a colorful figure with an unusual way of life and the ringleader of spontaneous, often illegal events. The ever-present wooden bird on his shoulder was remembered, as well as the paper angel wings sewn into his clothing or intensive, provocative makeup, but also the so-called "dziubary", spectacular thefts of state-owned food stores. When he was still a primary school student, he is said to have come to school naked, wrapped only in a map of Poland. What is important, his actions were not legitimized as art. Few remaining photographs depict almost fully naked Niemczyk bathing in a fountain in front of St. Mary's Church in Kraków. He turned his mother into a "living statue" by tying her up to a bench in the Planty park in Kraków, in front of the Bureau of Art Exhibitions.