Lands and Seas of Asia

Once again, in our museum on the Motlawa River we have the opportunity to admire exotic landscapes of remote Asia, thanks to Elżbieta Szołomiak’s painting exhibition entitled “Lands and Seas of Asia”.

The paintings shall be showed in the Warehouse, the selection of paintings from three countries in South-East Asia come from the collections of the Asia and Pacific Ocean Museum in Warsaw and from the artist’s private collection.

Information about the artist:
Elżbieta Szołomiak was born in 1940 in Jarosław. She graduated from the Art Faculty at the Nicolas Copernicus University in Toruń. She has shown her paintings in many Polish and German galleries, but also in Austria, Japan and Indonesia. In 1999, the Asia and Pacific Ocean Museum in Warsaw organized exhibition of her works from Indonesia and Thailand in its gallery Dong Nam, and the following year in Duta Gallery in Jakarta. In 2005, the Museum presented a series of her pictures devoted to Myanmar (the Burma).

To Elżbieta Szołomiak colour is in focus. On her pictures the landscape, figures or objects change into colourful spots and sparkling, always charming harmonies, without losing its legibility. The artist uses bright, joyful, vivid colour. She paints with full, dashing energy. She is also a very good observer of the world. She puts everything into her memory, all the shapes and colours, complexion of people, green shade of the trees, sparkles on the water, all shades of cloth, flowers, houses and other objects. Everything is then subject to painting synthesis and translated into the language of simplified, dynamic form.

Elżbieta Szołomiak gets her Asiatic inspirations for the first time in the 1990’s and they are now flourishing with her journeys to the islands of Indonesia, Thailand and Burma. The painter has found the unlimited richness of the colour ever existing there in nature and in human creation, strengthened by the intensive tropic light. Besides the landscapes, her attention was attracted to a human figure, especially in motion, thus her love to painting dances and ceremonial processions. She was interested in the local colours, unique landscapes, maritime scenes, ceremonies and local fairs, very picturesque for someone from Europe, but also by very universal themes, such as maternal or child pictures. Irrespective of the subject, Elżbieta Szołomiak’s pictures radiate with light, beauty and optimism.

“Lands and Seas of Asia”
Warehouse, by the Gdańsk Crane 24.06.2006 – 30.04.2007