In Andrzej Pietsch's works nature, and especially the mountain landscape has been a significant inspiration. Family traditions of mountain climbing early brought him close to the group of Cracow mountaineers. Soon he joined the circle of young active Tatra climbers. The mountains in the artist's landscapes (drawings or etchings) have nothing to do with the convention of a motif seen from a far away distance and the horizontally treated space.

On the contrary, drawn from a short distance, as if from the opposite point, they are steep, flat, and vertical, just like the Tatra slopes. The works with the grass motif are drawn even "nearer". Sometimes more or less recognisable fragment of a silhouette, most frequently a woman, merges with the landscape or just forms it. The artist is brilliant at the etching workshop in all its varieties using various methods of preparing matrices and the ways of printing, also those invented by himself.

That is what the artist says about his work:

"The reasons why I adopt a certain intention, idea, motif in a drawing or a graphic seemed to me more obvious in the past than at present. Yet still emotions and impressions emerging from my fascination with nature, a landscape (mostly with mountains) and contacts with people are of the greatest importance to me and - in my opinion - most successful. Both these main themes mingle with each other in my creation. Up till now I have not managed to find their synthesis which could satisfy me. The more work I have already done the more frequently it has occurred to me to return to my previously collected ideas or sketches which I used to draw and put away to find new potentials in them. I often work nearly simultaneously on different solutions, though some of them are contemporarily rooted and the others originate in the past which is still vivid to me. I both can not draw from "myself" (I am. not able to define more precisely the need of external emotional stimuli characteristic of me), and I would not be able to stand hardly any reaction to what I do. Hence I am dependent on both, yet I do not think I am an exception to the rule. I do not complain then, especially that I appreciate my chance of doing what I like to do even if it demands determination without any certainty of a final success.

The graphic technique I pursue is, to say most generally, intaglio printing, especially etching or the way of scratching lines and points in a zinc or copper plate by means of acids. Having covered such a matrix with paint which fills a "bitten" drawing, it is printed on paper in a press which works like a wringing-machine. I am very fond of this technique and I use all kinds of its variations, testing my own devices as well. I like such cases which, while printing my graphics, create new workshop potentials. I also use any chance of change, not paying too much attention to the sameness of prints. Although when it is necessary I am able to be a perfectionist, I prefer my workshop to become the element of an artistic adventure."

Bernard Kepler

Translated by Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska