Dimensions: 120 x 100 cm
Signed within the composition: 'J.A. Bałdyga'
Signed, dated, and labeled on the stretcher: '17 "Stairs to Heaven" dimensions 100x120 cm, created in 2022' and signed and dated on the reverse: 'Janusz A. Bałdyga | = 2022 = ✓'
Biography
Surrealist painter, poet, one of the most consistent artistic figures associated with the Bydgoszcz creative community. A graduate of the Leon Wyczółkowski State High School of Fine Arts in Bydgoszcz, and subsequently of the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he studied under Adam Marczyński. He received his diploma in 1973. In the mid-1970s, together with Michał Kubiak and Ignacy Bulla, he co-founded the Bydgoszcz Group—Gallery 1+X. He has presented his paintings at numerous solo and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including in Paris, Pesaro, West Berlin, Almería, Bydgoszcz, Poznań, and Toruń. While still a student, he represented the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków at the international exhibition *Junge Polnische Kunst* in Esslingen and Mannheim (1971). His works were also featured in major surveys of Polish contemporary art, such as the Festival of Contemporary Polish Painting in Szczecin (1974) and the Bielsko Jesień competition (1978). From 1989 to 1991, he held a series of solo exhibitions at the BWA galleries in Bydgoszcz, Poznań, and Toruń, and in 2018 he returned with his own exhibition at the Kantorek Gallery of the Bydgoszcz BWA. He is the recipient of numerous awards, honors, and fellowships—including those from the Ministry of Culture and Art, the Bydgoszcz Province Governor, and the Mayor of Bydgoszcz. In 2020, he was honored with the Jerzy Sulima Kamiński Medal for his contributions to the culture of Pomerania and Kuyavia.
Bałdyga’s work, deeply rooted in surrealist imagination, is sometimes compared to the work of René Magritte—yet his paintings constitute a distinct, individual variation on the theme of dreamlike spaces, metaphors, and symbols. The artist has undertaken numerous creative journeys—to Austria, Germany, Italy, France, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, and Spain—which have significantly influenced the development of his painterly language. In addition to easel painting, which he practices primarily in oil, he is also a poet. In 2019, he published a collection of poems titled *On the Shore of Time*.
