‘Self-Portrait’ with scars – Jerzy Panek and Poland at the turn of the 1960s

Abstract


 
 
 This article discusses Panek’s ‘Self-Portrait I’ in the context of socio-cultural changes in the Poland of the late 1950s. By putting scars on his face, Panek portrayed himself as a bandit or a drunkard, and that observation is further substantiated by an analysis of a preserved woodlbock used in the making of the print. In leaving the scratches and rifts in the matrix, Panek manifested his physical anguish and stressed the connection between printing tools and pain, evoking a gloomy atmosphere of communist Poland.