One would like to describe Juliusz Joniak's paintings with the above words from the Arthur Rimbaud's verses. Between those two worlds - the world of the poetry and painting - there exist many similarities. And the same cult: of the sky, sea and sunbeams. Not for nothing travels the Artist each year to the South of France, the region of Coullioure, where fauves resided. The glow and vigour of these paintings - this elan vital, so important in creativity - although not always directly visible - they really distinguish the Joniak's paintings from the others. His still - lives and landscapes enrich the spectator in energy.
  The unique phenomenon of this activity is also a result of his attitude, which states: it is enough to open oneself onto sensations and to express in the painting what senses pass, without attempts of any rational interpretation, any interpretation at all. I describe to the Artist my impressions from the exhibition of his paintings and he was astonished. He was surprised how far one can get...
  On sills of the atelier there are bottles: green, white, blue. The bottles and other modest accessories, how different from those commonly visible on paintings. This is the wonder of the art of painting - the wonder of the art in general - it does create important objects from triviality. Still-lives by Juliusz Joniak are so magnificent and his objects - in mutual and formally not simple relations - are really prominent as royal ones. The Artist says that everything may be the impulse for painting - if the painter has imagination. The imagination that means "...the ability to experience everything that can only happen". He feels sorry for those who stop at some phobia, for those who do not know the openness. To be on the way! The painter believes that the openness is a powerful causality of the art. Because only then "the painting job" goes on.
  The wide Earth landscape has always filled me with admiration. In the Polish painting it was perfectly realised by Jacek Malczewski. In the paintings of this Master we observe the unprecedented organisational rigour of the brave and full of harmony solution of proportion: from the top to the bottom and from the left to the right side of a painting. Some analogy we see in Juliusz Joniak's paintings - their power results from the uncommon way of construction. In this respect the Artist has gone some steps further than his Professor, Czesław Rzepiński, whose painting courage is more cautious.
  The Juliusz Joniak's landscapes used to be watched from above; from the position of someone approaching the Earth from the distant spaces, someone who is astonished with the beauty of the world, the richness of its forms and the gift of colour. And may be even more! The undefined, really difficult to call, substratum movement...may be the readiness for further transformations? The colours, like butterflies, tremble bound to the shape, ready to fly to the painting space, any time.
  I agree with the Professor's lack of confidence in the verbalisation: because it happens that all words of the description vanish in contrast with the perception of painting. And this is what I have experienced. The Juliusz Joniak's works, painted during the last months, enrich his artistic achievements. They significantly contribute to the world, so important in Kraków and in Poland.

                                                                                                                                                         Barbara Ziembicka