“The painter combines reality, fantasy and purely abstract elements in a distinctive way, creating a space for the audience’s own story. In his works we find both a contemporary feature and the atmosphere of the paintings of the old masters”

Ryszard Kalamarz – painter and renowned Polish portraitist, born in 1954 in Przemyśl. A graduate of the State Secondary School of Fine Arts in Jarosław and the Faculty of Graphics of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.

The main motif of the artist’s paintings is a figure, often stylized theatrically. “The characters from Ryszard Kalamarz’s paintings – fragile, fleeting and airy – look at the viewer with a mysterious half-smile. Among the theatrical decorations, props derived from theatrical illusion, birds, masks, mirrors and shells, dressed as costumes, sit gazing into space. There is no trace of coquetry in them. However, they are aware of participating in a mysterious mystery – the mystery of life.”

Out of his fascination with the world of ballet and theater in the late 1980s, the Artist creates a series of paintings depicting dancers. His favorite motifs are characters belonging to this world. The artist prefers to place them in interiors that bring to mind the mysterious backstage of a theater or fairy gardens, which are the background for human
beauty as well as real emotions and passions.

“However, one should not be fooled by the illusion that Degas, who is equally fascinated with ballerinas, is the painter’s master. The French impressionist shows a fraction of the world. The tangled naked arms of the dancers are just a photographed moment. Ryszard Kalamarz’s paintings are closer to the tradition of Velasquez’s “Infanta”, in whose eyes the absolute truth about the world seems to be hidden. With the help of his ballerinas, harlequins, pierrots and children, the painter conveys his feeling of the world, usurping the exclusive right to the truth. Because he knows.”

Ryszard Kalamarz’s works were presented at individual and collective exhibitions in galleries in Poland and abroad, including France, Slovakia, Canada, Japan… Since the early 1980s, the artist has been living and working in Rybnik, Poland.