Jakub Kijuc

• born 1981
• he was born in Grójec
• he lives and creates his works in Krasnystaw
• he specializes in comics and illustration

“Only love is creative”.
(St. Maximilian Kolbe)

He studied art education in visual arts at the Faculty of Art of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. In 2008, he graduated from painting, supervised by prof. Krzysztof Bartnik. He has participated in many exhibitions, including in Lublin and Warsaw.

The most important publications: “Czarna Materia Prezentuje: Konstrukt”, Vol. 1‒3, Czarna Materia, 2011; “Konstrukt”, Materia Komiks, 2016; “Jan Hardy – Żołnierz Wyklęty”, Czarna Materia/Materia Komiks, 2013‒2015; “Ale w radiu nic nie mówili. Komiks o Lubelskim Lipcu 1980”; (art), story by S. Zajączkowski, Fundacja Ruchu Solidarności Rodzin, 2015; “Jan Hardy: Niniwa”, Materia Komiks, 2015; “Ognik #1 – Cichociemny Hardybohater”, Materia Komiks, 2017; “Lirnik” in “Komiks i My”, 2017, cover for “Superman Action Comics”, Egmont, 2019.

Characteristic features of Jakub Kijuc’s comics include subtle contours as well as dynamic and economical strokes with thin and intentionally quivering lines, which emphasizes the technique of drawing with a fine felt-tip pen or a felt-tip pen.
Ostensibly hurried strokes are accompanied with a far-reaching economy, often visible in background characters, which are sometimes only black contours, with no filling. However, the economy of the means of expression is the most visible in the manner used by Kijuc to depict faces; they are barely sketched eyes consisting of circles with a dot in the centre and noses drawn using a single line. Despite that far-reaching grotesqueness, the artist’s images do not lose their realism.
While the earlier comics were dominated with strong and contrasting colours (e.g. yellow, blue, and pink, openly referring to the palette of comic books published by TM-Semic in the 1990s), in his later works Kijuc, while still faithful to his love of colours, uses, in a single page, colours with less expressive contrasts, from a similar palette, e.g. subdued yellows, oranges, or greens. In the drawings devoid of shades, colours are always flat and, as a result, the artist achieves the effect of two-dimensionality.
The maximum simplification, the reduction of unnecessary elements up to the intended disappearance of the three-dimensionality effect combined with an intentional overdrawing in the cartoons style place Kijuc’s drawings at the intersection of the old American comics and newspaper comic strips.

Jakub Kijuc Gallery

More information about the artist: kijuc.com