Retrospective SHOW I

Majka Sochaniewicz. I like her painting...

 " Majka Sochaniewicz. I like her painting and this is the reason why I am writing this introduction to her catalog. In fact I should have married her long ago, but now we are both past such nonsense - she paints, I write introductions.

  Delicate Mary and her cycle of hard solid pictures. The variety of women she paints. This lack of consistency is only superficial, in fact there is a very feminine consistency underlying all her painting. An original, overdrawn style bordering on the primitive and caricature. And what seems obvious to me is her conscious departure from the primitive, although at first reading we detect here a strong affinity to glass painting.

  Of major importance here is the background. The artist does not use a normal perspective, her perspective is imposed by certain hierarchies, some imperative values. And the foreground, those overdrawn pictures of women, seem to be a series of self - portraits. The same person created ever a new by her environment, shown a various cultural contexts.

  The excellent brothel scenes. For it is the environment that forms women - and not only those from the canvasses of Majka..."

Andrzej Pastuszek
Introduction for catalog for exhibition in Nowy Swiat Gallery
Warsaw, 1980 (excerpt)

"In her painting..."

   In her painting Maria Sochaniewicz focuses on specific subjects. The first defined series called "Victory" was composed of powerful, sort of archaic female figures, remote sisters of Nolde's characters, Gauguin beauties or Matisse's models.

   The end of the 70's brought series with groups of figures, scenes from whorehouses, "dancers and ballerinas", "punks". The situation presented on canvas acquired more descriptive precision and a higher dose of realism without losing momentum, solid fracture treatment, vivid colors, so typical for Maria Sochaniewicz painting. Even though it never became a fact, the artist feared falling into realism and portraying life, which was against the real spirit of her painting. She desired more freedom and fun in ³smearing paints² as she herself calls it.

   Therefore, she gave up painting interiors with figures and changed subjects, but not the atmosphere of her artwork, always full of universal symbolism.

Kinga Kawalerowicz

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