Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz: A Partisan for Art (Moon Arrow Press, 2013) ISBN 97809775455 (hbk) / 9780992434892 (pbk). The design is by Michal Dutkiewicz, based on a photograph by Peter Medlen (1962) and a montage of two of the artist’s paintings.
This full biography of the Polish-born Australian artist comes in a 30 x 30 cm hardcover with dust jacket (details below). It amounts to 160 pages in full colour, with 187 photographs and illustrations, including 55 full-page colour plates. A revised and updated paperback edition – ISBN 9780992434892 (paperback) – was produced early in 2019 (28 x 28 cm), and is available from Royal SA Society of Arts Gallery.
This book is a companion volume in the biography of Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz – painter, sculptor, writer, actor, stage designer and theatre director. It complements A Matter of Mind: An Introduction to the Art of Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz (1918-1999), published by Moon Arrow Press in 2006.
In this volume the story of his life is fleshed out from the outline provided in the Chronology in the aforementioned monograph. It presents numerous artworks in colour not provided before; a range of images selected from sketchbooks found subsequent to the previous publication, dating from the start of World War two; and other graphics and documentary photographs from the artist’s extraordinary archive. Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz: A Partisan for Art reveals the battles the artist fought as a Polish partisan and as a leader of the Displaced Persons’ camp in Bavaria, where he found himself after the war; the story of his migration to Australia; battles in the minefields of Australian art and his confrontation with the hugely conservative art world of Adelaide in the 1950s. It chronicles the extraordinary range of his artistic output in painting, sculpture, public art and on the stage, as actor and producer, and as an actor for Crawford Productions’ television dramas in the late 1960s.
“Adam has brought his own special and questing mind to create this book about his father’s mind and art, sifting through the discordant layers of a rich life and exposing a special legacy. His labours have generously elucidated for us the mysterious and arresting synthesis that was this Polish-Australian artist and reinforced for all of us the value of art in life.”Elizabeth Ho, OAM, Inaugural Director, Hawke Institute, University of South Australia
The book is available from blurb.com in hardback and as a PDF: http://www.blurb.com/b/4668001.
A Matter of Mind: An Introduction to the Art of Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz (1918-1999)
Moon Arrow Press, 2006, ISBN 0977545504 (pbk)
Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz was a painter, sculptor, writer, actor, stage designer and theatre director. After arriving in Adelaide in 1950 he was first noticed for his set designs for plays. He made a strong impact on art in South Australia with his forceful expressionist paintings and experimental modes of abstraction.
By the decade’s end he was included in publications on Australian art and international exhibitions. He formed the Art Studio Players, working with The Method from 1959-62, directed two plays for the Adelaide University Theatre Guild, in 1959 and 1967, and later appeared as an actor in several television dramas in Melbourne. In the 1950s and 1960s he was widely regarded as a leader of the lively modern art movement in Adelaide.
A revised and expanded hardback edition is now available on blurb.com. It is also available as a PDF. http://au.blurb.com/b/8480574-a-matter-of-mind
Copies of the first edition paperback are available from the publisher.
Cover Image: Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz: Spring
1971 Adelaide, oil on composition board, 91.5 x 122.0 cm
Private collection, New South Wales
Photograph: Graeme Hastwell
The Dutkiewicz Archive 
available from blurb.com or from Moon Arrow Press (www.moonarrow.com)