2024-04-25
Today, the market for recent and contemporary art is full of works representing trends such as magic realism or surrealism. We are increasingly willing to buy works of art detached from reality, presenting fictional characters in unusual settings. Such paintings are also appealing in their content, as they stand out from the abstractions that are so numerous today. Contrasting with non-representational art, magical realism or surrealism provide the viewer with contact with a specific scene, which he or she can interpret and understand independently. This value allows for an individual search for symbolism in the individual elements of the shot. It is not uncommon for contemporary artists to reach for this form of expression, continuing the long-standing legacy of Surrealist artists. In Poland, one of the most popular and recognizable artists of this trend is Rafał Olbiński.
Rafał Olbiński (b. 1943) is a Polish illustrator, graphic artist, painter, and stage designer. His work on canvas and paper is characterized primarily by realistic and precise depictions of phenomena, people, animals, objects or buildings, which the artist places in a non-realistic, magical convention. Olbinski began his artistic career by illustrating and creating posters. In the 1970s, he joined the representatives of the Polish Poster School. This was an artistic phenomenon developing at the time, whose representatives brought the poster out of the purely utilitarian category, discovering the aesthetic potential of the medium and classifying its effects as works of art. Olbiński had the opportunity to create posters for well-known films, operas, and plays. After immigrating to New York in the 1980s, the artist continued to work as an illustrator, collaborating with the most important American newspapers. Constantly taking on new commissions, both private and public, Rafał Olbinski created a whole spectrum of graphics and posters, which are still quite readily available on the art market. In the last decade of the twentieth century, the artist began to paint on canvas, upholding his previously developed aesthetics and themes. The reality he shows captivates the viewer, neatly bypassing the anxiety typical of surrealism and leaving an interesting image of an invented, magical scene. In Olbiński's oeuvre we can find works made in various artistic techniques, but representing similar visual qualities, which make the artist's oeuvre particularly recognizable and appreciated among art lovers and collectors.
Magical art attracts by its uniqueness and invites the viewer into a fantastic world, which they are free to interpret. In his canvases and prints, Rafał Olbinski often inscribes a character into a seemingly realistic landscape, adding a surreal flavour by means of strange details, non-standard composition and imaginative placement of unusual elements in the representation. Olbinski's elaborate artistic manner means that his works have a similar, distinctive aesthetic. This, combined with the surrealist subject that is characteristic of the artist and fundamental to his works, creates his unique and recognizable style. The techniques used by Rafał Olbiński, such as incography or lithography, have produced many copies of the images he creates. For this reason, it is still easy to find available works by the artist on the art market, and techniques on paper allow purchase at an affordable price.
In our offer you will find Olbinski's works both in graphic techniques and on canvas, as well as a unique set of three works: a painting, a drawing, and a sculpture with a swan motif. We invite you to familiarize yourself with the proposed objects by Rafał Olbiński, which take up the theme of magic realism in an interesting way.
