In 1988 an individual exhibition of his works was held at the famous Houston Fotofest in the USA. A similar showing took place in 1990 as part of the huge exhibition L’AnnÉe de l’Est at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. In 1991 thanks to Jerzy Olk Hartwig’s works were presented individually at the second East-West Photo-Conference 'European Exchange', which was the most important international photographic exhibition held in Poland in the nineties. He wrote about photography:
Photography is a visual art, which may be realized using traditional methods, however drawing inspiration from the world of imagination and fantasies is also good. In my practice I’m often guided by intuition. Without intuition there would be no art.
In the final stages of his career, he experimented with colour photography. Once again he addressed the issues of the abstract image and its coexistence with the figurative form. In his artistic conception literally every representation underwent the processes of posterization and elimination of semitones. He altered negatives using various methods, which was a way of fulfilling modernity’s postulates. By doing so he followed in the footsteps of such artists as Bronisław Schlabs (1950s). Hartwig aimed to individually and characteristically aestheticize the images, which had chiefly painting qualities rather than photogenic features. This resulted in ‘artistic formalism’ (the term was first used by Jerzy Olk). Hartwig’s works may be compared to the painting conceptions of the American Aaron Siskind, who in the fifties searched for universal values in abstract expressionism. Many of the Polish artist’s photographs are allusive abstractions or longings for abstraction, in which the realism of fragments reminds us about palpable reality (for instance people, fruit). He emphasizes the structures of given imaginary forms, the graphicness of lines, the often dark tones. This is a distinguishing feature of his experiments. The modern experiment was an important fingerpost on the very long path of the artist's seekings. For Hartwig photography was a material used not only to posterize but also to multiply (pop-art’s influence) and to deform. In his multi-aspectual work, one may also notice a fascination with the beauty of the female body, which he often juxtaposed with abstract structures. Since the 1950s his name is synonymous with 'artistic photography'.
Works in the collections of amongst others: Art Museum in Łódź, National Museum in Wrocław, Murray Forbes Collection in Cambridge (Massachusetts, USA), National Library in
Warsaw, Portrait Collection Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
Author: Krzysztof Jurecki, Art. Museum in Łódź, May 2004.