- In contemporary sculpture - says Konieczny - the portrait has undergone an unpleasant degradation. Very little of this type of work is done, although the history of art documents that sculptors once took the portrait to new heights. I often feel sorry for myself because I have committed a sin of neglect when it comes to portraits, but since my health and imagination are still good, and I also meet a lot of people worth immortalizing in bronze along the way, I am trying to make up for this backlog as best I can. Someone will say that many monuments also feature human faces, and often their expression is a key element of the composition, so the author of the monuments does not abandon portraits. This is true, but the truth is very superficial. When creating a monument, I look for the simplest, most accurate metaphor to describe a certain idea; the figures and their faces are subordinated to it. They must have their own soul, but they must also sell this soul, like Mephistopheles, to the general idea of a monument. Let's imagine that I gave one of the central figures of the Grunwald Monument the face of Professor Marian Zgórniak and his nice, slightly enigmatic smile. What would then happen to the ideological message of the monument? It would depict not a victorious king returning from Grunwald, but the student Jagiełło taking an exam in military history. ... Even when there is only one figure on the monument, I deviate from the rules of portraiture - although to varying degrees. Nike from Warsaw is not at all the girl whose features I used in the project, Wojciech Bartosz Głowacki is a specific peasant, but above all, the conqueror of the Russian cannon. The monuments of Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Stanisław Wyspiański, Wincenty Witos are much closer to the concept of a portrait; almost entirely himself is Władysław Grabski, financial reformer and Prime Minister of the First Polish Republic, whose bust I made for his hometown of Borów in the Bielawy commune near Łowicz. Size is not the deciding factor, although Grabski's bust, a little over a meter high, could be placed not only outdoors, but also in the living room. However, Grabski from Bielawa had to look like a statesman. Of course, he was an outstanding statesman - but not only that, just as Alexander Kravchuk is not only a professor and a writer. This is where the dog lies buried: a sculptural portrait should, first of all, present the spirituality of the person portrayed, not his achievements and the functions he performs, although these values naturally influence each other to a significant extent. However, since the human personality is something very complex, when portraying a specific person, each artist will bring out a different part of it - and in this sense, a "double portrait" is always created: the artist and the model. Sometimes coincidence throws in its two cents. When I wanted to portray my son, he had shaved his head. , so I stylized his character in a convention borrowed somewhat from ancient Egyptian motifs.