Born in Zdolbunowo in Wolhynia in 1922. In 1944-45 Fijalkowski was deported to Königsberg (presently Kaliningrad), where he was pressed into forced labor. It was during Poland's occupation, a particularly difficult time in Fijalkowski's life, that he undertook his first creative explorations as an artist. These efforts were entirely independent, unguided by anyone. He did not find time for systematic study in painting until after the war. Between 1946 and 1951 he attended the State Higher School of the Fine Arts in Lodz, where he was a student of Wladyslaw Strzeminski and Stefan Wegner, though he had Ludwik Tyrowicz as his thesis promoter. From among his teachers, Fijalkowski most readily names Strzeminski as an influence, perhaps because he later worked under him as an assistant (the artist taught at his alma mater from 1947-1993, becoming a full professor in 1983). He was an important presence within the group of educators who shaped the school in Lodz (known today as the Academy of Fine Arts). He also guest lectured for brief periods at a series of foreign art schools, among them the schools in Mons (1978, 1982) and Marburg (1990). He taught classes at Geissen University throughout the 1989/90 academic year.


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