Stanisław Baj

Stanisław Baj (b. 1953) comes from Dołhobrody on the Bug in Podlasie - and it is precisely this village and this river that became the centre of his art. He drew, as he recalls, „for as long as he can remember”, in a rural house where neighbours gathered for evenings full of storytelling.

In 1972-1978 he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw - under Michał Bylina, Jacek Sienicki and Ludwik Maciąg - and defended his diploma with distinction in the studio of Maciąg, whose assistant he became. Since 1982 he has taught at his alma mater; today, as a professor of the Faculty of Painting, he runs a diploma studio.

After early genre scenes drawn from village life, since the 1980s his work has focused on two motifs: landscape and portrait. He paints directly from nature, taking the picture from realism all the way to almost pure abstraction - so that a particular bend of the river or a face becomes a universal sign: of Time, of Fate, of transience.

The most important remains the Bug River. For a quarter of a century Baj has returned to the same place, trying to capture its movement and its essence - „the most beautiful river in the world, because it is mine”, which looks different every time. In his paintings his native village and the river grow to the rank of the Centre of the World, and his Bug-side landscapes are today among the most sought-after by collectors.

The other pole is the portrait. He portrayed his own mother more than two hundred times - in different periods of her life, up to her last days - raising a painterly monument to her and spinning a tale of love and transience. With the same attention he portrayed his neighbours from Dołhobrody, the inhabitants of the vanishing world of the Polish countryside.

His painting - close to the prose of Wiesław Myśliwski, whose books are adorned with covers bearing Baj's paintings - combines a perfect craft with existential depth. Awarded the Silver „Gloria Artis” Medal and the papal „Benemerenti” medal, the author of over a hundred solo exhibitions, Stanisław Baj is one of the most distinct voices of contemporary Polish figurative painting - a painter for whom one river and one village turned out to be an inexhaustible subject.