Janusz Malinowski

1948 - 2011

BiographyDelighted as he was with nature, artist Janusz Malinowski often worked summers in northern Alberta as a fire spotter for the Forestry Department of the Government of Alberta. But he also loved humanity, and volunteered at the Calgary Drop-In Centre helping impoverished and homeless people. He shared his artistic gifts and insights by teaching art at the University of Calgary, later working inside Calgary’s Board of Education until returning to the University of Calgary as a team leader and program director in Continuing Education.

Although born in England, Janusz Malinowski grew up in Edmonton. After earning his BA at the University of Alberta (1969), Malinowski studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland (1969 – 1970). He then returned to the University of Alberta as a special student in Fine Arts (1970 – 1971), and pursued a Bachelor of General Studies at Athabasca University (1986 – 1987), and later his MFA at the University of Calgary (1999). He worked in various media: commercial silk-screening, watercolours, graphite, and pen-and-ink; he created sometimes surrealistic work using thin washes of acrylics.

Malinowski staged a solo exhibition at the Edmonton Public Library Gallery, and several group showings in Edmonton and one at the Galeria Dom Artysty in Warsaw. The collections of the Alberta Foundation of the Arts and the City Medical Clinic of Central Warsaw preserve samples of Malinowski’s oeuvre.

Shortly following a cancer diagnosis, Malinowski died at age 63 in 2011.