For Zbigniew Warpechowski—one of the first artists around the world to take up performance art as well as its precursor in Poland—writing poetry coincided with the beginning of his artistic path. Poetry was often part of his performative activities. The collection contains nearly 80 poetic works written from 1964 to the 1990s as well as three new essays in which the artist deals with the history of performance art while presenting his own views on art.
‘During one ceremony I said that the joy that pure, selfless creativity gives an artist is incomparable to anything else. And I would like to promulgate this one maxim. We always receive compensation, regardless of the artist's fate. We do not sacrifice ourselves for it, but live for it, in it art is a form of life. It has to be treated as a voluntary oath, even when we encounter failure after failure, because it gives us force and inner strength. You cannot be an artist or a poet only sometimes’ (from the essay Laury i ciernie).