Artists of the Gallery Art: Maciej Deja

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• Maciej Deja

  Born in 1960 in Warsaw. Studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw with Prof Wanda Paklikowska-Winnicka. Graduated in 1987 under tutorage of Prof Roman Artymowski.

• Human being – monumental and primeval – is the subject of Maciej Deja’s art. (Man) without the additional literature, houses, landscapes, needless equipment says the artist. In his prints – the mezzotints, the human body, muscular and athletic emerges from the black background. Strongmen cower in a foetal position, kneel or fall asleep like vulnerable children. My prints are stories told without time or place. The characters have no clothes or hair. This makes the pose, in which they freeze, more striking.

  The muscular characters of Deja’s prints resurface in Deja’s paintings where they become even more expressive. The muscles acquire some colour – reds and browns.