Oldie

Waclaw Karol Szpakowski was born in Warsaw in 1883. He graduated from the Depa¬rtment of Architecture of the Technical University in Riga in 1912. Between 1912 and 1916 he participated in the design and building of the docks in Arkhangelsk. Between 1923 and 1933 he worked in the Ministry of Post and Telegraph and in the Main Post and Telegraph Office in Bydgoszcz. He was active in the Civil Guard in 1939. From 1939 to 1943 he was a building inspector in Otwock. In 1952 he was employed by the Road and Air Transport Administration.
Waclaw Karol Szpakowski died in 1973 at the age 90.
(These data on Szpakowski are taken from the article "Linie rytmiczne" (Rhythmical Lines) by Janusz Zagrodzki,published in the magazine "Projekt" No.2,1979.)
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In 1900, when he was seventeen, he started doing these drawings.
His notes from that period contain thoughts on questions of science and art.
SYMMETRY AND RHYTHM WERE REGARDED BY SZPAKOWSKI
AS ESSENTIAL QUALITIES OP THE ANIMATE AND INANIMATE WORLD.
He was not a member of, nor did he associate with,any artistic group. And he never exhibited his works. It was only in 1978,five years after his death,that the Art Museum in Lodz first present his works to the public.
The first specefic idea for the film PiRaMidas 1972 1984 came from this drawing by Szpakowski. By way of an example, a Super 8 fim was made litteraly on the basic of this detail. The lengths of the frame in the film were double the lengths of the lines in the drawing. This means that two frames in the film corresponded to one milimeter of the position of the line. Four different camera position in train movement gave four basic directions of line movement:
LEFT-RIGHT, UP-DOWN and
DOWN-UP, RIGHT-LEFT