Nikifor Zbigniewa Herberta i Jana Józefa Szczepańskiego

Abstract

Zbigniew Herbert and Jan Józef Szczepański showed interest in art and were friends with outstanding artists. Both of them learned to paint in their youth. In their texts, they revealed the competence of the experts. The author of the article analyses the literary works and journalistic texts of the two writers, resulting from their meeting with Nikifor and the experience of his works. She shows that the two writers, despite an imposed ideological context, negative for them and for the work of the painter (the decree of socialist realism in art) found their own key to Nikifor’s work: Herbert embedded it in myth, Szczepański in metaphysics.