Outsider Environments Europe: Adam Szubski, Galeria Rzezby Adam Szubski / Sculpture Gallery Adam Szubski

all images published here in agreement with Justyna Orlovska,
from her website Off the beaten track

Zgon is a small village with about 150 inhabitants, part of the municipality of Piecki, located in the north-east of Poland in the Warmian-Masurian region. The village is located south of a large lake called Mokre and has a pictorial appearance, especially because of the atmosphere evoked by the many old-style houses.

The village is intersected by the national road DK58 and where this road runs right along the lake, there is a special house, equipped as it is with a sculpture garden.

Take a look at Google Streetview, which has the scene at the location.

The sculpture garden is a creation of Adam Szubski (1931-2008), who was born in Warsaw.

His father, Stefan Szubski, had a job in metalworking and won many prizes in the years before the Second World War.

Adam Szubski became a stonemason, but he also worked with metal, especially with sheet zinc, .a material he also used at that time to create works of art.

Indeed, although he had no artistic training, he showed in the 1960s that he was motivated and had a talent to create works of art.

He was admitted as a member of the Association of Polish Artists and exhibited his work not only in Warsaw in a café on the Old Town Square, but later also in museums in for example Germany, Italy and Austria.

Szubski had married Anna Sierpińska and in 1972 the couple moved to Zgon to live in a cottage located along the national road DK58 where it runs right next to the lake. Buying the house also meant that the couple saved it from demolition because of its poor condition.

One of the first projects they undertook was to renovate the hundred-year-old house, which they did by restoring the original interior as much as possible and refurbishing and reusing what was left of the equipment from earlier years, such as old stoves and fireplaces. By doing this the house was eventually recognized as a monument

The couple was also active in projects that benefited the community in Zgon. For example, they founded an association that focused on creative activities with the inhabitants and Szubski arranged for the restoration of the local old windmill, which not only resulted in a tourist attraction. but also contributed to pumping water from the surrounding meadows.

The FACES project

In the 1990s, when Szubski was in his sixties, he became inspired by the idea to decorate the garden near the house and so he began making sculptures using a mixture of cement, resins, acrylic and paint.

It became a project, called Faces, which resulted in some 200 creations, mainly of human heads.

These heads got different shapes, sizes and expressions, sometimes realistic, sometimes fantastic, but occasionally also grotesque, strange or creepy for some people visiting the site.

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The sculptures depicted heads of famous people, friends, acquaintances and residents, but also .characters from mythology, fairy tales and literature.

Among the celebrities were depictions of people such as Pope John Paul II (a cardinal from Poland, elected pope in 1978), Lech Wałęsa (president of Poland from 1990-1995) and Marilyn Monroe (American actress, 1926-1962).

By the way, as can be seen in the images, besides the collection of heads there are also sculptures that depict people in full length.