Awards He was awarded several scholarships from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. In 1988/1989, he received a scholarship from the Italian government. Bednarski won the Katarzyna Kobro Award in 2004 and received an award from the EXIT quarterly magazine - Nowa sztuka in Poland (2005) and Golden Owl Award of Polonia, Vienna (2012). In December 2017, he received Premiazione del Franco Cuomo International Award (Franco Cuomo International Award) from the Italian Senate. He was decorated in Poland with Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis. Most important works Karl Marx Portret Karola Marksa (Portrait of Karl Marx) was Bednarski's diploma thesis, which he defended in 1978 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. The author assembled a large photographic documentary collection and created Marx's head in many different sizes. The portrait was considered a critique of communist propaganda. Bednarski continues to create "Marxes" in various incarnations throughout his subsequent career as a total project adding objects to Marx's head or multiplying it typically as a commentary on social, political as well as his private life. Signs and gestures Signs is a series of monuments based on the left hand of the author. Maryla Sitkowska, a longtime critic and archivist of Bednarski's work, describes them as sculptures of the hand which makes a special gesture. For example, Ticket shows an extended hand presenting a ticket. The most famous of Bednarski's gesture is Victoria-Victoria, sculpture of victory sign with cut fingers created during the Martial law in Poland (1981-1983). One of the versions of this sculpture was created in 1983 in France during the sculpting symposium in Digne-les-Bains. The sculpture shows V sign (of victory and freedom), but with the fingers cut off. The first version of this sculpture was created in Poland couple of years before. Moby-dick Bednarski writes about the series of Moby-Dick works: Working on Moby Dick completely changed my thinking about sculpture and space. There has been a rapid re-evaluation of my sculptural language [...] Suddenly I felt the "freedom opening". I knew that I found the foundation of my sculpture. In 1986, he found the hull of a large boat in the snow on the Vistula river which he thought resembled the white whale from the novel of Herman Melville. The hull was cut into sixteen parts, in the act of deconstruction, and was subsequently reconstructed in the attic of the palace