Polski Akt Malzenstwa (Polish Act of Marriage)

The artist "Jurry" Zieliński, a virulent critic of the Communist regime, is one of the rare Polish artists who emulated the Pop Art aesthetic in the 1960s and 70s. He created a polymorphic, dreamlike reality that explored themes including national identity, religion, and politics, distancing himself from the Post-Impressionist art of the Polish academe. His Pop approach is characterised by its critique of the Communist and Catholic regime rather than of consumerism. Zieliński appropriated the iconography of social realist propaganda to express his anti-establishment dissidence with great irony.

The Polish Marriage Act (1974) depicts marriage with a tinge of both irony and vulgarity in its astute use of the many meanings of the represented symbols, ultimately to mock censorship more deeply. Through an interplay of composition and minimalist forms, Zieliński pushes the religious symbol of the heart and the cross into the domain of eroticism, thereby caricaturising institutionalised love.

The work was first presented by the Pinault Collection in the exhibition « Forever Sixties » at the Couvent des Jacobins in Rennes (2023).