Abandoned Pictures, from the series “The Painter, the Moon and the Police”
The painting triggers memories of the twelve years of the Night of Europe (1933-1945), when the Nazis commited unforgivable crimes against humanity. I believe that every person who has visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp experienced the trauma of compassion, anger, questioning, helplessness and forgetting. From that moment on, any birch becomes a tree-witness, and brown is the most corrupted of all colours. I dedicate Abandoned Pictures to all avant-garde artists who became victims of Nazi officials, which often resulted in their death. I also dedicate them to heroic art lovers, museum workers, gallery owners and collectors who were forced by the terror to abandon their ideals, or even to take to plundering. The picture undoubtedly shows a historical event that should never happen again. I hope that the hare is wise and values such as patriotism, democracy or justice will never become empty slogans.
> Zdzisław Nitka