oil, canvas; 80 x 120 cm;
Signed, dated and described on the back: Grażyna Smalej Toy Seller
Grażyna Smalej 2015 oil on canvas Smalej;
Polish painter and graphic artist, graduate of the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, she received her diploma in 2001. From 1998 to 2001, she received a scholarship from Hans Bernhardt (Germany). In 2001 she received the Grand Prix of the Minister of Culture
in the Marian Michalik Competition for Young Painters in Częstochowa. She is a multiple finalist in the Bielska Jesien Biennale of Polish Painting. She has had many solo exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions at home and abroad, including the Saatchi Gallery in London (Continental Shift, 2014), Lambertville in the United States (May Day, 2015). Her works can be found in private collections
and institutions around the world - in Europe, the United States, Australia, China, Japan and many other countries. Since 2018, she has been a member of the Sisters of the Rivers collective organizing, among other things, happenings for the protection of rivers in Poland.
In painting, the artist moves freely between various conventions -.
depending on the subject she is currently dealing with and exploring. She is a devotee of lightness in means of expression at the same time attached to the two-dimensional traditional canvas, which she sees as a field of infinite possibilities. She attaches great importance to color being for her the ideal medium for expressing emotions.
Grazyna Smalej has created many series of paintings, very diverse in terms of style. A series depicting people at work, in their uniforms, during non-routine activities such as repairing a road, repairing a gas pipeline, collecting straw after a harvest, cleaning up after a performance at a museum, chopping wood by the woods and many similar, side-by-side everyday situations, well known, overlooked, this series is just an example of a series created over the years. It is a painterly expression of a love of marginal activities certainly inspired by the great realist Gustave Courbet, the author of The Stone Cutters. Lumberjacks, sellers of inflatable toys by the lake, farmers, sculptors, cleaners, builders are the protagonists in the painter's very richly colored scenes. It is the perspective of a tender eye that finds reason to celebrate during an ordinary workday.
