Lechosław Lameński
World according to Marek Sołowiej
Born in Zamość, Marek Sołowiej creates in a worldwhere there is room for nature (inspired by beautiful Roztocze Park) as well as straightforward, devoid of inner perspective schematic forms bordering on abstraction and religion.
Marek Sołowiej has been painting for nearly twenty years (since he received his diploma in 1981), and if only for this reason he is a mature artist with a clearly defined artistic personality. There is no doubt about it. His paintings are easily recognisable in the multitude of other painters. Not only because Marek Sołowiej paints in cycles, a few or more than a dozen works of the same format on a given subject but above all because his paintings, gouaches and distempers combine reflection, distance with regard to a thin layer carefully filling canvas space or cardboard sheet.
Marek Sołowiej’s cycles of easel paintings are above all the result of his thinking in purely painterly values. His works constitute a continual dialogue between form and colour, brought down t, as I mentioned earlier, to apparently straightforward and obvious combinations (with subtext) in which there is no place for useless long-windedness or empty baroque embellishments. There is, on the other hand, concern for creative resolution of flat plane covered with paint in a specific order. This may be the reason why this dialogue is so interesting and unique.
excerpt from the text included in a catalogue of an art exhibition –
author – professor of History of Art KUL – Lublin.
ART OF MAREK SOŁOWIEJ
by Jerzy Madeyski
Marek Sołowiej received Grand Prix on 1st International Pastel Biennial Anno Domini 2002. The prize was awarded by a professional and international jury with an overwhelming number of voices. I must be added that the competition was numerous and keen which makes the prize even more worthy. But that is not all.
It also proves that Sołowiej is a born pastelist enjoying his art. Being a pastelist is not a result of a preference for this technique colorire a secco, as Leonardo da Vinci defined it, because pastel, or to be more exact, a penchant for expression by means of it is more of a feature of character rather than just an artistic technique.
Not without reason did great Anton Raphael Mengs call pastel paintings butterflies in the garden of arts, and beautiful savantes and men of letters of the Renaissance loved the brightness and fragility of pencils dipped in powder and praised them in their poems. For pastel, putting all its other obvious attributes aside, is above all the manifestation of what is nowadays very rare and consequently invaluable, namely good and even exquisite taste which goes far beyond the plane of painting. In this respect, the third of the great, Michael Angelo was right saying si dipingo con cervello, non con le mani – one paints with the mind, not with hands and certainly not with a set eye – hand.
Good taste involves above all a particular way of thinking and feeling as well as a way of perceiving reality. Art is a choice from among a multitude of offered by reality impulses, but only those which the artist deems worthy of his or her attention.
What is it to us that Sołowiej uses oil, distemper, gouache and sometimes combines all these techniques. Even if he does, he still thinks in terms of the pastel. Sometimes he goes so far that it becomes very difficult, especially in reproductions, to differentiate his oil and distemper from the pastel itself. What is more, all the effects obtained by an artist painting in oil can be obtained by means of pastel, while the reversal of this process would involve many difficulties as the subtlety of the pastel is impossible to imitate by means of other techniques.
Sołowiej paints in cycles, approaching a problem in its two aspects, form and content. He examines their relation and looks for the ways of combining them into one artistic organism. Quite so – organism. Alive and therefore changeable, but melted into one by just one wish: so that the content becomes the form, because WHAT has become HOW and vice versa. This very dream of the avant-garde comes in Sołowiej’s case more and more often true.
The world, however, and ourselves have a complex nature. Full of contradictions and hesitations, finding their reflection in every authentic and ambitious work of art, putting the authoritarian kind aside. Based on two rules: one of contrast, the other put forward by pseudoaerogite Dionize antagonistic linking of opposites.
Sołowiej has chosen the latter possibility as it is closer to him because less or at least differently confrontational, regarded not as a battlefield, sharp clash of contradictory rights but rather quiet and focused discourse, full of ambiguities and question marks. It’s all but too understandable, as modern art is to a greater degree a field of posing questions rather than formulating definitive answers.
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Mengs and contemporary art. Is Sołowiej then a modern or traditional artist?
By all means a contemporary one. His way of thinking and communicating his ideas as well as doubts and dilemmas; he is a contemporary artist in his approach to the object he is concerned with and its transformation into a work of art, in treatment of light, in composition and finally in a vista method of work, so common among the innovators of the past age creating in feedback in which the effect influences the cause, paints in a constant dialogue with the emerging piece of art, which method lends the paintings a touch of freshness and spontaneity, if only apparent. Apparent because good improvisation must be thoroughly thought over and prepared. It must be meticulously done with truly Benedictine patience, as art is aslo, besides everything else, craftsmanship. And good craftsmanship inspires respect even among those who do not necessarily agree with the artist’s perception of art.
Such are the artist’s paintings. Unconstrained but at the same time subjected to inconspicuous discipline because spread on a thick geometrical net, the construction of vertical divisions which have always been throughout the ages and cultures the expression of idealism and such approach to reality.
The above mentioned net serves as a frame on which the artist spreads the tissue of his works which have postimpressionistic genesis with regard to the treatment of colour and light as the fundamental substance of painting. That impossible to put in words union of both values in one indivisible unity which they actually form. Only from the physical point of view however. The transposition of this rule into the world of art is incredibly difficult and requires cooperation of perfect vision with equally perfect technique.
Postimpressionistic play of colours on geometrical plane have however, besides many advantages, one drawback: they cannot express the mystery and drama, not even suggest their existence. Therefore, they are emotionally limited and specialised in conveying bright and unantagonistic content. Those which characterise the lounge painting of all the ages. Moreover, postimpressionism narrowed the motif down to four fundamental subjects: landscape, nude, still life and portrait. Sołowiej, however, does not like limitations, except those he has imposed himself.
The manifesto of postimpressionistic doctrine preached aliterality which was in many cases contradictory to the four fundamentals. Vivid painting, hegemony of colour and corresponding light – yes. Lightheartedness of the shown content – threefold no because in this sense Sołowiej is much closer to neo-romanticism of Young Poland Bohemia rather than the crazy twenties with their fascination for the automobile, sport, speed and jazz where postimpressionism celebrated its greatest triumphs.
For this very reason in Sołowiej’s works we can often see symbolic forms imposing mysterious and sometimes even bawdy associations, which is not surprising considering that la belle epoque as well as Art Nouveau was fascinated by eroticism and its prophet, Przybyszewski.
The artist introduces very typical for symbolism, because mysterious, metaphysical light coming from somewhere, from some secret source hidden behind the plane of the painting and oneiric ballet of changeable forms; anthropomorphic landscapes and plants, scary trees and headless homunculi. And objects of unknown provenance, unfinished as if solidified in the evolutional process of searching for its form and emotional identity, to which the viewer must lend the final form and expression.
Above all, Sołowiej ravishes the saint postimpressionistic plane and discards the method of its retrieval: the plot of his paintings takes place in space constructed through light and colour and the colours go far beyond the postimpressionistic idea of interchangeable positioning of the blots in warm and cold key because the artist likes monochrome and feels well with it although he can operate with intense and even drastic contrast like juxtaposition of bright pink with soft black. All the same, he follows the subtle and devoid of brutality rule because pastel - or more widely – thinking in its terms possesses great intensity. Intensity which confers beauty and conscious striving for it. It has also got great convincing power: we approve of Sołowiej’s paintings even before we have managed to read or decipher its meaning.
This statement should suffice for all accolades and theoretical dissertations.
Cracow - January 2003.
DUSZA PEJZAŻU The Soul of Landscape
About pastel painting of Marek Sołowiej
The direct distinctive feature of Marek Sołowiej’s painting is the spontaneity of brush gesture, but also the incredible sense of matter and spectrum of colours. These elements show the immense talent and sensitivity of the artist who using oil and pastel techniques has been creating the unique visions of landscape, which to large extent mirror his internal experiences. Sołowiej as an artist is something of a wizard of poetic climates, vagueness and allusions, but also obscure, mysterious and soft spaces encouraging to meditation. Various moods and magic aura always attract the audience as they project the uniqueness of something. They touch what in arts is called inexpressible, but what is the concise and aromatic substance of arts. Condensing of moods, lively expressed colours and forms, some imagined premonitions – these are the values armed with which the author wants to conquer the world. This is how he is recognized and associated with his works. His identification is unique and therefore credible. This way the artist has its own face, is himself in an indefinite tangle of artistic expressions of different kind and genre, also those outstanding, crystal achievements of humane expression and artistic passion. The first time I got acquainted with Marek Sołowiej’s painting was in Nowy Sącz in 2004 during his individual vernissage simultaneously organized with the 2-nd International Biennial Exhibition of Pastel work. Marek Sołowiej was a laureate of the previous year’s Biennial Exhibition so the Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions in Małopolska region had decided to organize an individual exhibition for him. I remember the exhibition remarkably well. It made a huge impression by its homogeneity and phenomenal atmosphere. Specifically the pastels in grayish and greenish shades with delicate modulation of form sunk deeply into ones memory and attracted the audience. It was clear that in his artistic work the artist displays the flourish and courage of his painting but also is capable of composing the most subtle shades of colour and building up drama of nearly musical nature which is gradually and smoothly graded and emphasized with accents of sharper lines, separators and edges. The titles of these works, created as series, had also a metaphorical ambiguity: ‘Determined by the natural state of matters’ – Painting II, ‘Landscape of Poland – Painting remembered’, ‘Landscape of Poland – composition’, Landscape of Poland – landscape remembered, painting XXX-d Krynica’, Landscape of Poland – enchanted gardens’. By referring to what is retrieved and stored in memory the artist merely pinpoints some concretes, hints source information , but the final painting having been processed in memory and initiated by imagination is realized in internal experiences, therefore its form is so meaningful. One may think that Sołowiej simplifies the forms by making them too schematic, but in fact finds for them excellent unity of a unique kind. This is the mystery of his painting so as the places of his birth, childhood and university education all influenced by poetic nostalgia filled with eastern sentimentalism and spiritual mentality of the people. Born in Zamość and having studied in Lublin, Marek Sołowiej must have been naturally influenced by the atmosphere of both places as he grasped the skill of displaying that in his works of art. The landscape paintings of his all have souls, atmosphere, and the climate which was born and developed in a specific place, and has been ever since in a way ‘preserved’ in the mentality and the artist’s imagination. Genius loci, the spirit of place is ‘mobile’ and it may be accumulated in special or ritual messages in the form works of art. Similarly, it also refers to personality and experiences of a humane being. They are expressible and conveyable, where the special means of conveying the messages is in the form of artistic work – in this case oil and pastel paintings. When preparing his recent individual exhibition at Talens Polska gallery in Lesko, company which was also the organizer and sponsor, Marek Sołowiej decided to exhibit mainly his pastel paintings. In fact, thank to them the artist owes his life-time success: winning the Grand Prix award at the 1-st International Biennial Exhibition of Pastel works in Nowy Sącz in 2002. Among aggressive and boundless tendencies in modern painting, especially preferred by a younger generation of artists Sołowiej’s painting stood out from the rest by a cosy and sublimated poetry of delicate range of colours and the culture and sensitivity of laid matter which he used to bind the synthetic vision of Polish landscape. To highlight such a phenomenon among the overwhelming abundance and noise is not an easy thing. However the conclusion is very encouraging – it is worth to speak up about the art as well as it is worth to express and convey personal moods, including even those intimate and hidden somewhere deeply in human psyche, but genuine, true and credible possessing some kind of magnetism. Many artists have found landscape painting inspiring and a way of expressing their most hidden subtlety, mood or singing of the soul, which is merely felt, but is the fundamental shroud of identity. Marek Sołowiej’s painting is an example of having the need of a cosy shroud around sensitivity, which is typical for homo sapiens, and revealing his genuine longing and dreams. Having the possibility of seeing most of Marek Sołowiej’s oils and pastels I came cross a bit different cycle from the landscape one. I mean the paintings which expose female nude clearly introduced into composition frames. In landscape painting Sołowiej have used allusive and oval form, but also space and light obtained from a textural compositions and semi-glazing gradation as well as from a delicate colour and value differences which gave to many of his pastels the exceptional sfumato. Female nudes this time are clear and concrete, less fluid, less airy and fleeting. This is why I think the artist’s painting is not optimal in figure but his domain and strength may be found in this spiritual space, something elusive which may be a mere premonition, atmosphere difficult to define, unnamed but captivating and enchanting. I still have the pastels and oils of Sołowiej in front of my eyes. Among those painted with oil my attention is being riveted by a series of ‘Polish landscapes’ on the Vistula river. It is a beautiful, impressionistic painting, more transparent than pastels and richer in painting matter. But, it also happens that Sołowiej escapes from allusion and implying something what is close to condensing lyrical moods and almost provoking metaphysic feelings. I am watching his pastels and oils which constitute the portfolio of specific landscapes of Poland: the Mazurian region, Kazimierz Dolny, Mielno, surroundings of Słaboszowo, Czarny Potok, Roch’s valley. This is a clear effect of the artist’s work in the open air. Even a sheaf of corn brings to one’s mind a harvest and the title of one of Sołowiej’s paintings ‘all desires are shared’. I think that some of the titles of Sołowiej’s paintings should be spoken about with due admiration. In fact they happen to be too long and too complex and some are without titles. One of the pastels was given a sophisticated title: ‘A stroll at dawn, or maybe in the mist’. However, it seems that even more content is carried out in the title of another of his series of pastels: ‘Determined by the natural states of matters’. Let us hope that this natural determination gives the artist power and incentive to further artistic work and will allow him to spread his wings. Stanisław Tabisz Kraków, February 2005.