EN
Both in the world and in Poland works of contemporary art suffer destruction in a relatively short time and their conservation poses an ever bigger problem. The detailed information acquired direct from several Cracow artists (W. Buczek, T. Kantor, A. Marczyński, К. Mikulski, J. Nowosielski, J. Stern, J. Szancenbach and S. Wiśniewski) and briefly presented in this article, concerning their work, its technical, technological and material aspects as well as the author’s comments on conservation and varnishing o f paintings, may provide the base for putting straight the knowledge o f contemporary painters’ techniques and for the future preservation of the works under discussion. At the same time these data constitute a kind o f the time document, a set o f unique and soon unattainable information. Thanks to this it will be possible to avoid measures that might be against the will of the artist. None of the works o f the above listed painters is associated with the invention of a new painting technique and this is easy to understand. In their works the painters apply relatively well-known and popular techniques, i.e. water painting, gouache, oil, oil and resin, distemper, acryl, relief. However, all these definitions are very general and do not provide sufficient information on a particular painting and its structure. This is mainly because o f the fact that traditional laws and rigid regulations are getting effaced and the term of oil technique may be understood in different ways. Quite often it is only an impressional expression o f a classical oil technique, providing the base for artist’s own modifications in preparing the mortar, binding agent or vehicle. Generally, one can distinguish two trends in the works o f the artists under discussion: the first one bases on traditional methods (canvas, oil and distemper paints, author’s mortars) and the other one uses new scientific developments (fluorescent acryl paints, polyacetate, ready-made mortars, organic glass, etc.). The two trends either interwine in more or less the same degree (e.g. T. Kantor, J. Szancenbach or S. Wiśniewski), or one o f them dominates the other as can be seen in the works of A. Marczyński and J. Stern (synthetic materials in the painting layer) and of W. Buczek, К. Mikulski and J. Nowosielski (traditional techniques). Still, irrespective o f the division one can detect a certain common trait in all works, i.e. a wish o f the artists to use painting materials that have the best quality and ensure a high durability o f their works.