BWA in Wroclaw Glass and Ceramics Gallery, from 23 July to 3 August 2010
during the 10. Era New Horizons International Film Festival
Vernissage on 24 July 8 pm
The first exhibition of book illustrations by Stasys Eidrigevicius in Poland takes the spectators to a unique, frequently absurd, fairy-tale world of the author, constructed with his distinct brush stroke. His collaboration with writers who, often in a funny way, tend to deconstruct childhood myths and motifs known from children’s literature results in pictures dedicated to “former children”. Inside animal characters looking straight into our eyes, there are people stricken by an existential anxiety, halted not so much by the artist’s hand, which entangles them in symbolic bonds, but rather by the life they are living. Facing choices, looking for their own paths, happiness, or homes, with the power of the imagination and with marvellous helpers, they try to achieve their goals. Beside illustrations to cult books (such as Z powrotem by Zbigniew Batko, Iskry 1985; and The Raven King, the most beautiful book of 1981), the exhibition includes drawings made with cinema in mind. The effect of the collaboration with the master of animation, the central figure of this year’s retrospective, Daniel Szczechura, was A Good Night Story (1997) with music by Jerzy Satanowski and a poetic text by Jan Wo?ek. Motifs of Stasys’s works became incorporated in the film, entwined in the story and set in motion by Szczechura.
Agnieszka Szeffel
Stasys Eidrigevicius
Born in 1949, in Mediniskiai, Lithuania. A son of a Lithuanian mother and a Polish father, he has lived in Warsaw since 1980; painter, poster artist, designer of bookplates, drawings and book illustrations; author of happenings and installations. Graduating from the College of Fine Arts and Crafts in Kaunas, the Department of Artistic Design of Leather, he continued his artistic studies at the Department of Painting and Graphics in the Institute of Fine Arts in Vilnius (diploma in 1973). He won many awards at international exhibitions and in international competitions; his works are found in museum collections around the world. He is a hero in the film by Andrzej Papuzin'ski, Seven Mystery Plays after Stasys (Stone, Pendulum, Desire, Hunger, Maze, Hope, Liberation), 1994; in a film by Jacques Debs, Buzkashi (2008), which was in the Films about Art competition at the 9th ERA New Horizons Film Festival, he played a painter.
