Erwin Sowka was born in Katowice (Poland), where he still lives. From a miner’s family, he himself worked as a miner for seventeen years. When he was fifteen, he painted his first picture, moved by his admiration of nature. Serious and contemplative, he regards his painting as a means of self-expression, and brings to it his theosophical experience and thinking about the religions of the ancient East. He is fascinated by the secrets of Sumer, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and by magic and unknown worlds. "In creating, I study myself and thus come to know my own character," says Sówka. He uses oil because he considers it more permanent than other media, and he is reluctant to part with his pictures. The scenes he depicts are fantastic representations of man and his destiny to which he assigns the significance of moral warnings. His works are in the collections of the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw and in museums in Bytom and Zabrze.
Source: Bihalji-Merin & Nebojsa-Bato Tomasevic: "World Encyclopedia of Naive Art". London 1984. pp. 542-543.
