(Z broszury informacyjnej malarza)
 

BOGDAN STODULNY * 27.05.1953 OTWOCK 1979 ABSOLWENT ASP (ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS) - WARSZAWA 1985   AUSTRALIA SYDNEY-PROUDS. GALLERY, BRISBANE - ANDROSSAN GALLERY 198S   FINLAND - KALEVALA TEAT HER 1989   HOLLAND - BEST 1990   SOUTH AFRICA JOHANNESBURG - ARTERNATIVES GALLERY 1991   MONCHENGLADBACH-EINBLICKE KOLN - REGIRNGSPRESI DENT OFFICE 1991   ITALIA-ASSISI, GUBBIO - ETICA DELARTE 1992   DALLAS - USA - EASTERN ART 1993   FRANCE MOUNFLANQUIN, VILLREAL 1994   ATELIER GALLERY 1994   AMSTERDAM 1995   MADAGASKAR ATANANARIVO CAMUS CENTRE ART DECO

"W procesie malowania nie interesuja mnie "ladne obrazki". Wazne jest dla mnie to co odkrywam, jakie rodzaje zaleznosci miedzy mna a swiatem, miedzy sposobem malowania a przedmiotem."

"In the painting process I am not interested in "nice pictures". Of importance to me is just what I discover while painting, what are the kind of interrelations between me and the world and between my way painting the object."
 

    

To jedyna Galeria tego typu w Warszawie, prowadzona przez artyste, malarza, i podroznika-turyste Bogdana Stodulnego, ktora ma charakter jego pracowni. Artysta majacy znaczny dorobek tworczy i popularny w srodowisku artystycznym, zaprasza do wspolpracy takze innych artystow, promujqc ich tworczosc. Odwiedzajacy Galerie maja mozliwosc nie tylko obejrzenia i zakupu prac, lecz takze zetkniecia sie z procesem tworczym. Lokalizcja przy Rynku Starego Miasta 23 w lokalu Srodmiejskiego Oddzialu Polskiego Towarzystwa Turystyczno-Krajoznawczego, tworzy niepowtarzalny klimat dla prezentacji sztuki wspolczesnej i jej odbioru przez zwiedzajacych.
 

Whether or not you like STODULNY'S paintings, they can't be ignored: big, powerful canvases packed with figures and allegory, executed with brio.  Michael Coulson FINANCIAL MAIL

ATELIER GALLERY

This is only art-gallery/studio of this type in Warsaw - run by the painter Bogdan Stodulny.
The artist, who can by proud of his painting output and is very popular in the artistic circles, offers also other artists a chance to collaborate and promote their works.
Visitors who come to the gallery are able to see not just the works but also the painting process itself The gallery is located at the premises of the Polish Tourist Country-Lovers Association, Srodmiescie Branch, at No 23 The Old Town Square, Warsaw. This location is conductive to creation of unrepeatable atmosphere for presentation and perception of modern art.
 
 

"Pragne poznac sily, ktore sformulowaly swiat.  Mysle o afrykanskiej "mana" czy hinduskiej energii "prana".  te sile uosabia ocean, kreujacy formy i barwy silniejsze od ludzkiej wyobrazni.  Bylem malutka drobinka wobec jego ogromu i tylko chwila w jego wiecznosci.  Na oceanie zrozumialem co znaczy przestrzen i nieskonczonosc.  I to zaczalem malowac.." " I want to understand the forces that made the world exist.  I think of African "mana" or Hindu "prana".  This force is personified by ocean which creates forms and colors that are stronger than human imagination.  I was just a tiny nothing for his vastness and just a moment for the eternity.  It was there that I managed to understand space and infinity.  And those I started to paint" from Wojciech Krzysztoforski's interview of Bogdan Stodulny

Bogdan Stodulny is an artist with mission. He has circumnavigated the glob from his native Poland, taking in China, Cuba and Mexico in the last year alone. He paints everything in his path. South Africa is the most recent country to fall under his brush. Robert Pitchard spoke to him at the end of his three-month stint in South Africa.

Talking about art is, as they say, about as difficult as dancing about architecture. The dialectics of art criticism and history are further compounded by difficulties with language. Bogdan Stodulny speaks a mellifluous and heavily accented English, the fractured, rearranged English of Middle Europe, that often sounds more pleasing to the ear than so many of the colonial pidgins that the language has created across the globe. Stodulny strings verbs, pronouns and pungent adjectives together as though the voice were being reflected from a mirror.

The artist stands, gesticulating mildly, before his paintings in the Arternative Gallery in the Rosebank Mall. A 'restless spirit' and meeting old friends are cited as the reasons for his working visit to South Africa. He has been here for three months and traveled widely in the country already.

'I am a painter,' he says, 'It is the public who must decide whether someone is an artist.' During the period martial law in Poland, Stodulny arranged and designed exhibitions, as well as painting pastiches of the Dutch masters in order to keep body and soul together.

Poland, a country that has been at the crossroads of history for several centuries is Stodulny's birthplace and permanent home. 'Over a third of Poland's population have emigrated,' he says. Within the short passage of this century this is certainly true, which has- given the artist an enviable address book. Friends are to be found simply everywhere.

Rediscovering these friendships took him to Australia in 1985 with 100 prepared canvases that he filled with a furious energy over the period of a year. He toured the country widely as well as visiting New Zealand, Tasmania and parts of Asia. The Australian landscape and the Barrier reef he found especially fascinating because of 'the unbelievable clarity and intensity of color.' He exhibited in both Brisbane and Sydney. He is a prolific artist by any standards. Just how quickly does he paint 'It depends on the subject and the situation' he says. 'Anything from a few days to a few weeks.' He is also a prolific traveler; visits to China and Mexico last year were illuminating: 'The are very old cultures, nobody asks why are you painting. It is an everyday thing, they need it very much.'

A child prodigy, Bogdan Stodulny won a UNESCO drawing competition, at seven. He graduated from the W, saw Academy of Fine Arts in 1979. He is close to the almost suffocating density of European culture. 'Art is like good cooking. You can't explain it, you just have to eat it. Some kinds of art are impossible for me to explain'. His own work, as it spreads, o across the wall of the gallery, is arresting. The paintings with the most obvious African subject matter have an oddly European tone. Echoes of t apocalyptic visions of Altdorfer an Grunewald pervade. On one canvas a quartet of leopards menace a nude. The source of this subject turns out to be the several classical renderings of Susannah Before Her Rape By The Elders. Allusions to classical subjects become more obvious in several other, works after this explanation.

Manet is the next master for reinterpretation, Dejeuner sur L'herbe, this time with the gentleman turned into lions. The possibilities are limitless.

Two series entitled, A Short History of Mankind and, A Tribute To South Africa. are hypnotically busy. Warring hordes swarm across the canvases in battle formation and most amazing of all is a geometrically arranged charge by a Zulu impi.

Foreign eyes are occasionally more perceptive in gathering pieces of information in new countries, but Stodulny demurs from replying to any politically contentious questions. Events in Eastern Europe in the past year have left the inhabitants of the countries affected somewhat stunned.

Poland is a both a country and a state of mind, as anyone who has come into contact with the passionate intensity of Polish nationalism will know. But the strains of maintaining a working opposition to communism has taken its toll. 'So many people left Poland after the crushing of Solidarity in 1980,' says Stodulny matter-of-factly.

'Most of them were the more highly educated. We don't strike so much now, even if conditions are bad. People still don't know how to be free - old ways are firm in their psyches.'

He is surprised by the size of the Polish community in South Africa. The Gallery's co-director Joanna Klimczewski is herself Polish. One of the largest waves of immigrants was in fact directly after the clamp-down on Solidarity in 1980. Johannesburg seems very like, 'every other city in the west,' part America, a tang of Australia and its own unique flavor as a large mining town.

Bogdan Stodulny's work has a strange duality, for it contains a view of tumultuous events in both Europe and Africa. It's a rare opportunity to view the perceptions of an artist far removed from the usual cycle of foreign exhibitors to the country.

from the article
..on Life in South Africa

ROBYN, GREEN

BOGDAN STODULNY is exhausted. In fact, so tired is the man that he cannot , be woken to open the gate, hold any potential dogs and last -but by no means least - be interviewed.
Eventually the din seems to penetrate onto the patio and a tousled hair man with sparkling eyes leaps to his feet still unsteady from sleep. .
."So sorry!' he grins and for the next two hours this Polish artist - whose name means "gift from God" -is verbally unstoppable.

Born 1953 in Otwock, which is where he still lives, Bogdan has been drawing since the age of three when his first artistic depiction - was a bicycle.
Aged seven, he went on to Unesco drawing competition in India and eight years later he joined the School of Arts in Warsaw. The intervening years have seen him, exhibiting in West Germany, Australia, Finland and his works are in collections around the Continent.
An inveterate traveler - who was confined to Poland by the government for five years after his brother emigrated to Australia -  Bogdan is currently in South Africa, his first visit to this part of the world.

"Why am I here? I am very interested in travel.  Also, these are the times when things are changing in Poland, and my vision of South Africa is also changing.   It is also interesting to see how my work will change"
He added he believed he would concentrated on the history of the world; the creation of the human and the creation of civilization. "Maybe I will start something new in South Africa," he mused.
Although he did not bring any of his works with him, Bodgan is hoping to complete enough paintings for a local exhibition during his three-month stay. The only problem is he does not yet feel he is in Africa. Sitting on the lush suburban patio of the Lyttleton Manor home of his hostess, Kyrstyna Lech, Bogdan said he felt he was in Australia.
"It surprised me - I thought it would be different. There is a very big part of Europe here." He is determined, however, to experience all he can - while here, by traveling from the Cape to the Kruger Park.
Bogdan, believes an artist must represent the situation one finds oneself. in. "It is a pressure for you," he explained in. his heavily accented English. "You must paint something. I cannot. sit down and draw flowers. It is an obligation."
He likes, he said, to incorporate all his images swirling around his head into one pic: "I have - what do you call it - a multiplex vision of the world."
Maybe one-- could explain Bogdan's. inspiration for his particular style best, by quoting from his publicity pamphlet: "For me Art is a continuos process of searching for the essence of existence, the formation process not just the pictures of the world but also of myself.."

This is all the past.  The artist died in the car accident on November 23, 1997.
One of his friends and co-workers wrote in the letter sent to America: