Marcin Maciejowski’s painting Xawery Dunikowski (2005) is a black and white portrait of a fellow Polish artist who died in Warsaw in 1964. The painting belongs to a series in which Maciejowski explores male identity from a post-Soviet perspective. In the portrait the portrait, Dunikowski[1] appears next to his monumental sculpture sculpture Workman, which he publicly completed in 1948 for the Recovered Territories Exhibition. Dunikowski had been imprisoned by the Gestapo in Auschwitz, later producing critical post-war depictions of Lenin and Stalin. However, the 1948 exhibition was an event held by communist leaders to celebrate the return of the resource-rich region of Silesia to Poland. The resulting portrait is one of conflicted homage - Dunikowski, smaller than his sculpture with his hand placed on its shoulder, succumbs to the Social Realist imagery he leaves behind.

 [1] Information about Dunikowski compiled from culture.pl: https://culture.pl/en/artist/xawery-dunikowskI