A Magical Artist in Ankara: Marek Brzozowski in His 10 Paintings
Marek Brzozowski, Brzozo as he refers himself at his exhibitions, has been giving lecture on graphic desing, illustration and typography in Bilkent University since 1993. He has attended both solo and group exhibitons that are more than 100 in various provinces of Turkey in last 20 years. He also received worldwide prizes for his posters and logo designs. Brzozo states that living in Turkey has become a new source of inspiration for him. Lets get to know him with some of his paintings:
- Marek Brzozowski was born in 1952 in Bydgoszcz, Poland. He received bachelor’s degree and post graduate education in Poland and studied in Gdansk Academy of Fine Arts. After 1978 he started to attend graphic design and typography lectures. Even though he knew nothing about Turkey, he came to Ankara in 1993 on one of his friend’s advice and never left since then.
- Brzozo indicates that while busy with gardening in his parent’s house; his monotonous and boring life has encouraged him for discovering new worlds, reading, observing and drawing. And that is how his painting adventure has begun.
- It is possible to characterize his paintings as surrealistic or magical realistic. Even though there aren’t obvious differences between these two styles; in surrealism it is essential to reflect subconscious whereas in magical realism it is essential to depicture daily life with mystical factors rather than ordinary ones. In one of his interview, Brzozo also considers his work of art to be magical realistic.
- Brzozo has combined daily life practices with imaginary elements. He draws figures from fairs in city, flying people and cats with tails that lengthens to buildings which resembles us Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
- Marek says that his painting process is not just being glancing around and copying but being about his cultural observations that inspire and power him up just like a battery charger.
- In his paintings traces of life in Turkey are also visible. Since he has travelled a lot, his observations reflected on his canvas are not only from Ankara and İstanbul but also from the cities such as Mersin, Bolu, Nevşehir, Antalya. Brzozo gives examples from his paintings including gates of Safranbolu and windows of Alaçatı. According to him Middle East is a heaven for living and painting.
- One of the significant symbols in his paintings is the moon. By drawing attention to the volume of censorship during his childhood in Poland, Marek Brzozowski states that moon symbolizes lyrical freedom to him. Therefore moon is in almost all of his paintings apart from its regular location.
- Brzozo prefers to use bright and intense colors and that makes his work of art more attractive and celebratory in various ways. He also states that he mixes many colors until he gets the desired shade and he never starts painting until colors on his palette excites him.
- At the same time Brzozo works as designer, illustrator and art director. Also those features of him are clearly reflected on his paintings.
- Let us finish with his own words: “My purpose is to reflect imaginary territories, uncharted characters and nonexistent events in the world that is surrounding me with surrealist perspective.”
This article is written by Rasih A. and translated into English by Asena Çakan. You can find the original article in Turkish here.
