Contemporary Polish Art Exhibit

ON DISPLAY May 3 through Mid-June

Join us at Bainbridge Performing Arts in the Cynthia Sears Studio for a limited-time showing of contemporary Polish art on loan from owner Michał Dziuda. Art will be available for viewing during Art Walk on May 3 and June 7 from 5pm to 9pm, as well as one hour prior to any of our upcoming events. There is no cost to attend. For more information, contact our Box Office at 206-842-8569 or boxoffice@bainbridgeperformingarts.org.

Tytus Brzozowski

“Poznan - Warszawa” 2022
Watercolor, paper, 35 cm x 35 cm
On loan from the private collection of Michał Dziuda

Tytus Brzozowski (Warsaw 1984, currently living in Warsaw) graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology. He is a watercolorist and architect fascinated by the soul of the city. 

He often combines the silhouettes of buildings and people, creating colorful and cheerful scenes that border between reality and fantasy. His favorite muse is Warsaw. Despite the surrealist touch, his paintings are connected to the true history of Polish cities. The artist sometimes ventures beyond the realm of watercolor, as he did for the projects of six Warsaw murals, a large-format picture book called "Miastonauci" (City Navigators), and landscapes of the ruined capital for the film "After the Apocalypse.” 

Brzozowski’s artworks have been exhibited during the Polish Culture Season in Ningbo, China, as well as at the prestigious ARTLIFE festival in Moscow. They are also utilized by the Polish Tourist Organization to promote Poland at international trade fairs. Tytus's specialization and unique feature are his lectures on the architecture and history of Warsaw, which he conducts as part of his exhibitions. 

As an artist in love with architecture and Warsaw itself, Tytus portrays fragments of important and characteristic buildings in the city with remarkable precision and lightness.

Tomasz Alen Kopera

J15, 2015
Oil on canvas, 56.2 cm x 72 cm
On loan from the private collection of Michał Dziuda

Tomasz Kopera (born in Kożuchów in 1976) – graduated from the University of Technology in Wrocław. Kopera has presented his works at numerous solo and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including Traun (Australia), New York (USA), Brunswick (Austria), Paris (France), and London (England). 

Kopera’s paintings are full of symbols that relate to the human psyche and the relationship between humans and the surrounding world. He meticulously develops details and manipulates color. As he says: “In my work, I try to reach the subconscious. I want to hold the viewer’s attention for a longer moment. I invite reflection and contemplation. The most satisfaction I get is from painting various forms and structures: moss, lichens, roots, rock elements, embers, and fire. Clouds are also extremely fascinating, especially storm clouds. The actual content is secondary to me. /…/ The natural world is an inspiration to me – for example, trees or rather their branches bent in an interesting way, covered in moss and other lichens.”

Tomasz Pietrzyk

“Gniazdo” 2022
Oil on canvas, 90 cm x 90 cm
On loan from the private collection of Michał Dziuda

Tomasz Pietrzyk has been engaged in painting since 1999. Over the years, he has collaborated with numerous galleries, including those in Gdańsk, Lublin, Kazimierz Wielki, Bydgoszcz, Bielsko-Biała, and many others. His paintings find their customers in Poland, the United States, and the Netherlands. He also collaborates with the American company – ArtifactPuzzles. 

Tomasz Pietrzyk’s paintings depict a world created by the artist’s imagination. The realm of his dreams is populated by colorful characters from dreams and animals from the world of fairy tales. Pietrzyk’s vibrant and expressive paintings make the viewer want to become a participant, to immerse themselves in the extraordinary atmosphere of the fantastic reality. His paintings serve as a gateway to the land of dreams, to the world of fairy tales. There, one can rediscover our childhood dreams and completely transport oneself elsewhere.

Andrzej Fogtt

“Bdra” 2021
Oil on canvas, 100 cm x 130 cm
On loan from the private collection of Michał Dziuda

Jacek Yerka

“Wiedza Bagienna” 2022
Pastels, paper stuck to cardboard, 50.5 cm x 60 cm
On loan from the private collection of Michał Dziuda

Jacek Yerka (Toruń 1952, currently living near Toruń) graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń in 1976. He specialized in graphics. In the early years of his studies, he exhibited posters, including the Polish Poster Biennale in Katowice in 1977 and 1979, international biennials in Lahti and Warsaw, and others. Since 1980, he has devoted himself entirely to painting. 

Based on precise techniques inspired by old masters (such as Jan van Eyck and Hieronymus Bosch), but above all, his own boundless imagination, he creates surreal compositions that are particularly admired by enthusiasts of fantasy in all its forms. He inspired fantasy author Harlan Ellison to write 30 short stories, which, along with Yerka’s artwork, were published in the book “Mind Fields.” The same American publisher, “Morpheus International”, released the album “The Fantastic Art of Jacek Yerka”. He exhibits both nationally and internationally, being a highly regarded representative of the fantastic art movement.

Henryk Płociennik

“Dla moich przyjacio ł w 2433 roku”
Oil on canvas, 46 cm x 38 cm
On loan from the private collection of Michał Dziuda

Henryk Płóciennik (Łódź 1933, Łódź 2020) was a self-taught painter and graphic artist. He achieved a high position as a graphic artist, mainly working in linocut and zincography techniques. He is the author of fantastic compositions with rich, ornamental elaboration, illustrating the cosmic beauty and order of the world according to the artist’s vision. He exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, winning numerous awards. His work is represented in leading museum collections. 

In the painting “For My Friends”, the artist combined landscape with abstract composition. The sphere and square are figures that symbolize the cosmic beauty and order of the world. The artist wanted to share the vision with his friends.

Andrzej Fogtt

“Brda” 2020
Oil on canvas, 110 cm x 180 cm
On loan from the private collection of Michał Dziuda

Andrzej Fogtt (Poznań 1950, currently living in Warsaw) – studied at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznań under the guidance of Prof. Zdzisław Kępiński and Magdalena Abakanowicz. He received his diploma in 1974. He participated in exhibitions from the mid-1970s. In 1984, he won the Grand Prix at the Festival of Polish Contemporary Painting in Szczecin. 

He showcased a work co-signed with Bozena Biskupska – an environment titled “Mystery of Time”, consisting of his 14 monumental painting compositions. They were arranged in a scenographic composition intended to evoke both the sacred (without Christian iconography elements) and mythical and heroic tales of struggle and sacrifice. Foggt’s painting style during the peak moment of his career was based on the contrast between centrally positioned, hieratic silhouettes and the delicate, shimmering “scale” created by brush strokes. A similar style persists in the artist’s later works. In the series of works titled “Energetic Space”, he used paint mixed with metal shavings, which he subjected to the forces of a magnetic field during the painting process. This resulted in various effects, mainly textural. After 2000, the artist paints bright, colorful, “classical” nudes and scenes in landscape.

Sławomir Chrystow

“Dziewczyna z dzbanem nad wodą” 2016
Oil, tempera on board, 40 cm x 30 cm
On loan from the private collection of Michał Dziuda

Sławomir Christow (born 1976) is a Polish-Bulgarian artist with oriental roots. He is a draftsman, painter, and graphic artist born in Varna. The artist is open to the world of symbols and myths and practices painting in addition to graphic art, often using traditional techniques such as egg tempera, watercolor, and gouache. 

In his work, he references archetypes and symbols deeply rooted in our imagination, simultaneously combining different eras and cultures. Fascinated, among others, by the Italian Quattrocento and the paintings of Mughal India, he creates his own unique world, drawing inspiration from Eastern and Western painting traditions. The mentioned painting, maintained in the artist's convention of wandering between Italian Renaissance and international surrealism, is permeated with sensuality in the treatment of human bodies. The painter breathes life into them. As a graphic artist and linocut artist, Christow astounds with precision, creating surfaces that give the impression of velvet, metal, or fur. Always precise and tailored to the depicted motif, mood, and planned result, brings illusory surfaces to life from ordinary material. This fullness is the result of a complex creative process and encompasses the full range of creative and technical capabilities.

Jacek Szynkarczuk

“Oczko Wodne” 2018
Oil on canvas, 60 cm x 80 cm
On loan from the private collection of Michał Dziuda

Jacek Szynkarczuk, graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (diploma in 2004), specializes in easel painting. He lives and works in Skawina – near Krakow. Jacek Szynkarczuk is a representative of magical realism. The artist most often depicts green landscapes, sometimes with hidden architectural elements. 

He is primarily interested in the theme of landscapes that exist on the border between reality and fantasy, which sets him apart from other magical realist creators, characterized by the high metaphorical nature of their subjects. A portrait is rarely just a portrait, and a landscape is more than just a landscape in magical realism. Szynkarczuk's landscapes are characterized by the uniformity of their inaccessibility. They depict views of secluded realms that bear traces of human presence in the form of castles, fortresses, houses, towers, mazes, and windmills. However, these places are deserted, abandoned, as if existing outside of time. The cities depicted by the artist float in the vastness, above a chessboard of fields, like inflatable balloons filled with blue water. Szynkarczuk also observes ruins, standing alone, semi-ruined columns slowly overgrown with ivy, raising questions about humanity's role in the face of much more powerful forces of time and history, and about the physical traces left by humanity amidst natural landscapes. What is more, this fantastical images, hanging in the air on alienated islands or supported on pedestals, evoke the feeling of unease in the viewer, accompanying a solitary wandering among landscapes. The artist emphasizes that he has always been inspired by space and nature, or more precisely, the incredible power of nature.

Michał Dziuda (b. 1961) is an architect, entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist, and the founder of the Cavatina Group, a leading entity in the real estate market in Poland.  Since his days as a student of construction and musicology in Kraków, Dziuda has been focused on implementing the values of Humanism, Goodness, and Truth into his concept of a “Super company”—an organization driven by social purpose. The Cavatina Group is such a company, and engages in the planning, construction and sale of commercial offices, residential apartment buildings, concert halls and other public spaces in Poland and around the world, which include Cavatina Hall in Bielsko-Biala—one of the great new concert venues in Europe—and planned construction projects in Seattle and Bainbridge Island.

A poet, musician, writer, art collector and film producer, Dziuda is also the founder and spiritus movens of the Holistic Think Tank, an organization dedicated to creating programs for worldwide educational reform, as well as the founder of the Fiducia Foundation, which helps finance educational and medical research at academic institutions, reliable and valuable journalism (Holistic News), debates, and philosophical conferences (Holistic Talk) around the world.

“We are united by the idea of creating Goodness. That is the challenge the world is facing today.”

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