Every generation's early adulthood is an important formative stage of development. Our generation's youthful rebellion of March 1968 promised much, but was overwhelmed by the onward march into the blind alley of absurdity. The literature, theatre and art of the early seventies responded with a philosophy of pure-nonsense under the leadership of Sławomir Mrożek. It was the only possible sanity-preserving standpoint to take under a dictatorship that was vicious, suspicious and intolerant but oh-so-ludicrous and incompetent.

The oblique and idiosyncratic form that Polish humour took was to predominate in the satirical magazine Szpilki (meaning pin-pricks), which became the unofficial soapbox of the opposition. Its pin-pricks sought to puncture the windbags of self-importance The unending struggle of its contributors and editors with the censors has passed into legend. It was then, at the beginning of the 1970s that its editor Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz conducted a war of nerves with the censors; every week was a tense wait: have the censors fallen for it?. They did fall for it, and quite often at that. It did occur, however, that the gentlemen (and ladies) from the censor's office won. The pictures which often made it into Szpilki were true masterpieces of intellectual humour and satire.

In Toeplitz's day, there were four draftsmen who were particularly visible and pointed in their humour. The oldest of them was just over 30, the others in their early 20s. It so happened that they all had the same name. Thus the 70s were called the 'Era of the Four Andrzeje (Andrews)' - Czeczot, Dudziński, Krauze and Mleczko. Each of them was different but the whole of Poland waited for their drawings every week.

When I was taking over the Museum of Caricature and Cartoon Art over ten years ago, one of my aims was to organise one-man exhibitions for each of them. And it's not just a matter of sentiment, and the reminiscences of youth. The fact that the Polish sense of humour of the last 35 years has been shaped by them was of decisive importance for me. An additional argument was also that not all of them had had their individual retrospectives at the Museum of Caricature. The need for their exhibitions was obvious and indisputable; but their organisation was no easy endeavour. Three of them were still abroad: Czeczot and Dudziński in New York, and Krauze in London. The man on the spot was Mleczko and he was the one to kick off the 'Andrews' cycle of exhibitions here. At the turn of 2000/2001 came Czeczot, and at the end of that year came Krauze. So only Dudziński was left.

Our first discussions on the possibility of an exhibition in our gallery came in 1996 and we were to return to the subject many times over. But Andrzej tried to wriggle out of it all the time. He tried to convince me that most of his work was in America and it would be difficult to get everything together. The call to mobilize came last year when, as part of the broader 'New New Yorkers and Their Friends' festival, we organised 'Polish artists in the New York Times'. He made quite a few of his works available for that exhibition, but of course it was a modest particle of his whole output, relating only to his American period of 1979-89. In addition it related to that part of his life in which he was absorbed with illustrations of a more serious nature. It directly reflected the political events in our country during the emergence of Solidarity and its arrest with the Martial Law crackdown. That of course was a very important part of the artist's creative progress but I was dreaming of the old 'Dudi', the drawings from 'Literatura' and other joke figures, particularly Tygodnik Powszechny's 'Pokrak'. Andrzej finally agreed and we arranged an exbition at the beginning of the summer 2005. because it's a double jubilee year - 35 years of artistic work - which is tantamount to the birth of the bird 'Dudi' in Szpilki - and a round figure birthday. When it comes to real stars, and Dudzinski is one without a doubt, one doesn't talk about age, but - if you add both totals you get 95...

But lo and behold, the word became flesh and Andrzej is here. Discussions on what to call the exhibition went on quite a long time - '95 Birthday' was the first idea, finally we got to 'Dudi, Pokrak & Co'. And all the while, he brought batch after batch of drawings for selection every week - some of them going back to his early days. As is easy to notice, with the exception of 'Pokrak', all the characters are animals - a bird, a rabbit, mouse, mole or hippo. Is Pokrak a man? The Polish word pokraka means freak. Most of his animals are amiable and likeable, sometimes a little subversive, or snide, sometimes reminding us of our own negative sides. But Pokrak is different. His look and behaviour sometimes becomes all too reminiscent of people we know. He arrived in a period when peoples? ambitions and aspirations, for so long suppressed by the system, were suddenly given free reign, and what we saw was not always pleasant. The whole exhibition is Polish in flavour. We also have selections of his film posters - some of them real, some, jovial pastiches. The catalogue to this exhibition is not only a guide, but a sampler of his works, divided into the subject areas the exhibition aims to show. In recent years, Andrzej Dudziński has been a visible and active figure on the Polish cultural scene and a most versatile one at that - large paintings, drawings, graphic art, posters, and photography.

Within the framework of last year's 'New New Yorkers and their friends' he had three one-man exhibitions plus his contribution to the joint NYT one here. And after a long absence he has returned to Polish press via Rzeczpospolita which should please his legion fans enormously. I believe that what the artist's contemporaries, myself included, wanted was a retrospective of his satirical creativity. Because Dudi, Pokrak et al were and remain a projection of the reality that surrounds us, and a mirror held up to us. A crazily warped mirror no doubt, accentuating our foibles, and longings, and deviousness? in the past and today. So I think, special invitations to our old and new regulars and public are superfluous. I am sure that whatever happens, there will be a stampede to see this exhibition.

Marek Wojciech Chmurzyński
Director of the Museum of Caricature and Cartoon Art
Translated by Antoni Bohdanowicz