'He paints from his native land, in the broadest sense. That is why his work is so peerless and cannot be bent to fit any mould or inspiration coming from other paintings or other painters. Almost every one of his paintings strikes you with a singular way of seeing his land or, to put it differently, a way of seeing the world through the land.'
The 2024/2025 season at the Opera Gallery opens with an exhibition of paintings by Stanisław Baj (b. 1953). A graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, where he now teaches, Baj is one of the most original contemporary painters. His landscapes are an example of a painterly synthesis whose realistic elements are subordinated to the painterly universum. In the words of Wiesław Myśliwski, Baj creates 'metaphysical landscapes of his native Bug river', where water is movement and light 'radiating from all levels of its depth'. The artist's pieces will be on display at the Opera from 23 September until 30 November 2024.
All quotations come from Wiesław Myśliwski's essay 'Stanisław Baj – Matka, twarze, rzeka' published in W środku jesteśmy baśnią by Wydawnictwo Znak 2022, cited after Stanisław
Baj, Wydawnictwo Bosz, 2023
