Bogdan Ziętek sculpted the first woman in 1960. He called her Ewa. Altogether, he has created 14 full-size women’s figures and over 170 smaller 30/40-cm figures (including 4 male figures). At the exhibition in the Ethnographical Museum, we can watch eight sculptures presenting women of natural sizes, several smaller figures, as well as paintings, photographs and drawings.
Bogdan Ziętek was born in 1932 in Tłukienka – a village in the Olkusz County; after World War II, he moved together with his whole family to Lower Silesia, where he has lived till today (in Brzeźnica near Bard).
He has an emotional attitude to women sculpted by himself; he calls them ladies, maids, girls, princesses, or “golden wives”. He decorates, combs and paints them, devoting his attention and spare time to them. He dresses them in shops with clothes by weight, reworks bought clothes or sometimes sews by himself.
‘Beautiful women are like a torrent: they hum, capture your affections and go away. That’s why I keep mine at home,’ he said in one of the interviews.
He did not sell his sculptures for a long time; he was unable to part with them, because they were like dearest ones to him. His wife Agnieszka puts up with his passion peacefully. Bogdan Ziętek has presented his works at several individual and collective exhibitions, and his sculptures are kept both in private and museum collections. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue of the artist’s works issued by the Museum in Płock.
‘Venus from Brzeźnica. Women in Bogdan Ziętek's world’, Ethnographical Museum in Wroclaw, ul. Traugutta 111/113; the exhibition is available to visitors till the 6th of September.
