It was in the late eighties that Adam Adach (born 1962 in Warsaw, Poland) became an émigré in France, returning to his native city in 2006. Both his own life story, often gleaned from childhood memories, and collective memory, with allusions to major historical events, inform his work.
Adach draws inspiration from photographs of notable people, anonymous portraits, press cuttings, book illustrations and old periodicals, and, rather than merely reproducing them in paint, reworks them in an idiosyncratic manner. It is not just the immediately striking aspects of an illustration that Adach studies: as an artist, he is also keen to seek out the less obvious touches, the smaller and more personal story that underlies the picture. This gives rise to a layered image, adding a new dimension without detracting from the historical significance of the original picture.