Jarek Filipowicz

Jarek Filipowicz has been drawn to art since the age of four. His early talent was recognised with an award in a national art contest during his school years in Poland, and painting was set to be his path — until financial necessity meant that, from the age of twelve, he began working alongside full-time education, with formal art training the casualty. His first major work, completed in 1995, was a portrait inspired by Witkacy's double portrait of Winifred Cooper and her doctor — reimagined without the doctor's figure.

He built a career in business and settled in London in 2004, before returning to painting in 2014. In 2026, he became a full-time artist.

Self-taught throughout, Filipowicz works primarily in oil pastel on canvas, with a practice centred on figurative and expressionist portraiture. His current body of work is a twelve-painting cycle placing him in direct dialogue with the Modernist masters — a way, in his words, of completing the art education that work displaced from the age of twelve. Each piece takes a specific historical composition as its starting point and reworks it through a contemporary, often autobiographical lens. Sources in the cycle include Stanisław Wyspiański, Leonardo da Vinci, and Witkacy, among o...

University of Lodz

2018 — The A5 Show, Koppel Project Gallery, Holborn, London
2022 — Abstract Art, The Brick Lane Gallery, London
2024 — INCAHOOTS, Candid Arts Trust, Angel, Islington, London
2024 — FLUX Exhibition, The Bomb Factory, Marylebone, London
2025 — FLUX Exhibition, The Bomb Factory, Marylebone, London
2025 — INCAHOOTS, XYZ Gallery, London