Artist of the day: Artist of the day, March 3, 2020: Stasys Eidrigevičius, a Polish painter, graphic, illustrator, and installation artist. (#932)

Stasys Eidrigevičius (1949) is a Polish painter and graphic artist, painter, drawer, book illustrator; poster, bookplate, and installation artist.

Stasys Eidrigevičius graduated from the College of Fine Arts and Crafts in Kaunas in 1968. In 1973, he obtained a diploma from Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts. Since 1980 he has lived in Poland. Eidrigevičius is active in many artistic fields, such as oil painting, book-plate, book illustration, studio graphics, and photography. He has been interested in posters since 1984.

Eidrigevicius boasts a number of awards won at international exhibitions and competitions, notably at the International Biennial of Contemporary Bookplates in Malbork. In 1988 he received the American Film Critics' Award for the poster to the film Maskarada / Masquerade by Andrzej Kijowski.

Eidrigevicius' art is in the collections of the National Museums in Warsaw, Wrocław, Poznań, and Szczecin, at the Poster Musem in Wilanów, British Museum in London, Museum of Modern Art in New York, National Library in Washington, Creation Gallery in Tokyo, Vatican Museum in Rome and in private collections throughout the world.

Despite his use of various techniques, Eidrigevicious' oeuvre makes a distinct whole. An important role in his powerful vision of the world is played by symbolic images of being. While his art derives straight from symbolism and surrealism, it has created a unique, distinct and coherent world originating in the artist's imagination and dubbed 'cheerful through a wise sadness'. This world is populated with big-eyed, lonely and anxious children as well as birds, household animals, animated objects and masks placed amidst nostalgic, childhood landscapes. It is obsessive and rich in metaphor, and its unusual mood is permeated with deep reflection.

His characters, through whom he presents this world to us, take the form of puppets with large eyes and potato noses, of roadside scarecrows, wooden-winged birds, or flying people. He develops for them poetic circumstances that pile up in the fairy-tale logic, even though his art refers to human experience, emotion, and morality.

Stasys' first steps were bookplates, small graphic works (etchings, aquatints) and small paintings (gouaches, pastels). He exhibited his realistic pictures and printed bookplates - at which he became a true master - while still a student. His mastery of the metal techniques was appreciated a number of times, such as in 1973 when, as a student of the Vilnius Institute of Fine Arts, he took part in the Bookplat Biennial in Malbork and was awarded an honorary medal. These miniature graphic works were the first in which he started to present his intimate world of childhood in a fairy-tale, nostalgic manner. They were followed by book illustrations, mostly for children, which earned him international recognition.

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