Marek Firek

Graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the Cracow University of Technology, Cracow, Poland, 1985. Graduated from the Faculty of Industrial Design, the Academy of Fine Arts, Cracow, 1989. Received his doctorate degree from the Faculty of Industrial Design, the Academy of Fine Arts, Cracow, 1998. Graduated from the Pedagogical Course at the Cracow University of Technology, 1998. Since 1988 he has been teaching painting in the Division of Freehand Drawing, Painting and Sculpture at the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology. 

Two Special Judges’ Awards and four Honourable Mentions at the International Ceramics Competition, MINO, Tajimi, Japan, 1992, 1995, 1998; nominated for Paszporty Polityki as the Ładnie Group, Warsaw, Poland, 2002. 

He has participated in 51 individual exhibitions in Poland and Austria, and in 146 group exhibitions in Poland, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Slovenia, and Spain. 

Together with Rafał Bujnowski, Marcin Maciejowski, Wilhelm Sasnal, and Józef “Kurosawa” Tomczyk, he founded the Ładnie Group, Cracow, 1995; member of this group till its closing in 2006. The group was formed in opposition to the Academy of Fine Arts. Its name “The Nicely Group” was a reference to the remarks the academy’s professors made on the works of the students. Firek was its “ideologue and theoretician”.

His works are represented in public and private collections in Poland and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu, Tajimi, and the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, Cracow.

Marek Firek lives and works in Cracow.