It took place 33 years ago.

  A fair-haired boy was leaning over a miniature sewing machine and carefully sewing two ribbons together, one red, the other white, using a white thread. A multi-meter-long Polish flag was being created. Above the child's head and his "game", red and white ribbons stretched upwards, creating a V-sign. Victory!

  In this performance, the role of the "tailor" was played by Ignacy, Stasys Eidrigevicius’ son. The artist himself was a "cutter". He was cutting the tapering Polish banner into pieces and giving red-and-white bits of textile to the guests attending the opening of the exhibition at Warsaw’s Studio Gallery.

  Snippets of the flag

  In this way, Stasys was sharing with everyone (guests and their friends) the symbol of a new free Poland. He was already a citizen, having lived in the country for a decade. The year was 1990.

  With this performance, Stasys was simultaneously reinterpreting and bringing back a memorable work by fellow artist, Jerzy Kalina, who in 1983, during the time of martial law, presented the installation "The Last Supper" in Warsaw's Church of the Divine Mercy.  It was there, in the burnt-out interior of that rubble-covered temple that Kalina had "torn" our flag, somehow "crucifying " it, in such a way that the two separated ends of the white and red fabric also ended up forming the letter V beneath the vault. At the time, it symbolized the hope for the Polish nation's victory over those imposing an unwanted regime upon the country.

  And a few years later, our dream of Victory came true.

It was a time when Stasys embodied the triumph through his own fate. He too had won freedom. He had moved to Poland before the transformational breakthrough happened. As a result, he was allowed to go wherever he was invited, without passport restrictions.

  The decade ending the 20th century turned out to be ascendant for Stasys.
Everyone was courting him, showering him with prizes, inviting him over.

Does anyone remember how he was the first winner of the "Polityka Passports" award? I do. It was in 1993. We attended a modest celebration (some sandwiches, donuts, sweets...) at the headquarters of the weekly "Polityka" in Miedziana Street. The event came about ad hoc. Nobody predicted that the award would become a political statement in the future.

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    Nor did Stasys, as the first to be awarded the "Passport", realize that he was about to become a star. Now, by coincidence, the exhibition "Polityka's Passports -- 30 Years in Art" is on display at the State Art Gallery in Sopot (until April 16, 2023). Aptly and appropriately, the show features among others the first winner of the "Passport", since the Sopot exhibition coincides with Stasys' jubilee retrospective at Zachęta [the National Art Gallery].

  "Honey"

  Since success breeds success, 1993 was also the year that Stasys was approached by Jerzy Grzegorzewski [the great Polish theater director] with the idea of staging an experimental performance at Warsaw’s Studio Theater. Although the artist had no experience of working in the theatre, he took up the challenge. He created "White Deer" a personal performance, drawing on characters from his private archive. He "borrowed" actors from Józef Szajna's theater ("Replika") and Jerzy Kalina's happenings ("Pilgrims and Wanderers"). Everyone understood Stasys' metaphors, different though his experiences were from ours. I remember a TVP cameraman, who I worked with, who while recording this performance, spontaneously commented: "This guy is like honey for the soul."

  That's how he was perceived at the time. He was exotic yet authentic. And sensitive.  More than us, the natives.

  A bit of life

  Stasys's work was greatly influenced by his biography. Born in the village of Mediniszki in Lithuania (1949) to a Polish father and a Lithuanian mother, he was seven years old when the family moved to the vicinity of Panevėžys, one of the largest Lithuanian cities. By the way: the Stasys Eidrigevicius Center is currently being built in Panevėžys. Stasys is very proud of it. They appreciated him in the family! But he is also appreciated very much in the world. Especially in Japan.

  And how is he received in Poland, his second homeland?

Let's start with the 1960s, when a young man (still in the USSR) began his education at the School of Arts and Crafts in Kaunas, specializing in the design of artistic leather goods. His diploma work – leather book covers – was awarded a medal at an exhibition in Moscow.

  Stasys completed his studies at the Vilnius Institute of Fine Arts with a diploma (1973), after which he had to join the army. His compulsory military service lasted only a year, but for a sensitive boy that was a year too long. His art helped him to survive the mundane weapons training and night watches. However, given his situation and circumstances, he was forced to adopt an art format using a miniature scale. Yet it was thanks to his miniatures that Stasys managed to save himself and achieve success.

  He made his debut in Poland with these miniatures, or, to be more precise, with his ex libris [bookplates] that he sent to a show devoted to the genre in Malbork. His work was noticed and he gained fans. In 1979, he had his first solo exhibition at the Critics Gallery in Warsaw. It was a tiny place, located in the courtyard next to the University of Warsaw, where the program was determined on the basis of proposals made by critics. Stasys was nominated by the art historians, Wiesława Wierzchowska and Danuta Wróblewska. He had also come to the attention of Piotr Nowicki, owner of the first private gallery in Warsaw, which was located at the back of Nowy Świat Street.

  Poland in the 1970s and 1980s had all the appearances of a vestibule to freedom. Small wonder that the Lithuanian artist decided to take the daring step of settling in Warsaw permanently in 1980, along with his wife and two children.

  It seemed as though he had won the big lottery of life -- his career took off at a dizzying pace. For proof of this, feel free to go ahead and read Stasys's handwritten exhibition calendar. Zachęta has a board with over a hundred dates and addresses, listing half a century of the artist's oeuvre.

  As readers are probably aware, the 50th anniversary of Stasys was honored with an exhibition at the most important gallery in the capital.

  A bit of a shortcut

  The surname Eidrigevicius is neither easy to remember or pronounce, so the artist limited himself to signing his works with his first name. This, written in a characteristic way, became his trademark. He created thousands of variations of his signature.

  Over the course of half a century, the list of fields that the former miniaturist dealt with has grown, as has the size of his works. To enumerate: he is a painter, illustrator, bookplate author, poster artist, performer, creator of happenings and original theatrical performances (e.g.: "Biały Jeleń" in 1993 and "Wooden Man" in 2007, both at the Studio Theater). Moreover, he is a photographer, having started by documenting family members, neighbors, and places in Lithuania before going on to large-format staged photography. He is also an essayist and likes to record his journeys, memories and projects in words.

Oddly enough, despite its growing spatial scope and popularity, enthusiasm for Stasys's achievements began to decrease in Poland.

He was partly damaged by his own overproduction. He started repeating the same tricks. People were exclaiming "Oh, it's the one with the eyes" because the artist equipped so many of his models with round, button-shaped eyes.

It seemed that Stasys' strengths had been forgotten.
What has been forgotten is that he hits the nail on the head, extracting a wealth of metaphors from the forms and materials he uses, which at the same time capture the nature of events, place and time. Also forgotten is that he is not afraid to experiment; that he is sincere and always himself; that he is disgusted by fashions and trends considered "trendy"; that if something moves him, he speaks about it in his own way. The exhibition "!Reactions" is the best proof for all of the above.

It runs until April 11 at Warsaw's Zachęta National Gallery of Art.

At Zachęta

  Stasys’ jubilee exhibition wins… by modesty. This is not a retrospective, but a selection of works from several series of the artist's oeuvre. Stasys entrusted the curatorial task to his son Ignacy, a professional shooting instructor. Ignacy (the one who stitched the Polish flag 33 years ago) proposed a rebellious and explosive title for the show. He wanted it to be the exclamation mark. However, the jubilarian decided that it was a bit too short. So they settled on the title: "!Reactions". But the punctuation mark at the beginning of the title is also significant since it could connote a challenge, a disagreement or even perhaps getting your way?

  Already in the first room, we see a clash of times and situations: the right hand side features last year's paintings (18 pastels on canvas, 2022), while on the left, another 18 miniatures from the 1975-1979 period, created in Lithuania.

  Pastels on a rough canvas are a novelty in Stasys' art. If one were unaware of the technical difficulty this procedure entails, one might dismiss them as careless, less refined and superficial. But the truth of the matter is that the artist was experimenting. And while not everything may have worked out, in the case of the composition entitled "The Scream", most definitely it did.

  Used as the signture item for the whole show, it certainly does scream. Moreover, and importantly, it refers back to the symbol of Victory. And it invokes the form of a medal, a ribbon of the order pinned "in the lapel". The painting shows a red triangle, pointing down, with a black dot below. The sides of the triangle have two white semi-circles cut out of them, which reappear united underneath the triangle, creating the impression of an exclamation point dot. 

  Sinister Mask

  Since breaking away from the limitations imposed by the miniatures' format, Stasys has moved into the third dimension. There are several objects in Zachęta that somehow defy the description of being called sculptures, yet somehow on a larger scale this is exactly what they are. I'm thinking especially of the work called "Hommage à WTC", which consists of two severely whittled wooden rails and a human figure, cut out of parchment, placed between them. The silhouette of the figure, stretched as it is between the two "towers", becomes transparent when viewed against the light.

The works by Stasys that are displayed in the last room of the exhibition reflect his reactions to the reality in which we currently find outselves living.

That means Putin and the war in Ukraine. But… as is usual with this artist, a trip into the past is also involved. In 2003, Stasys made three masks from papier-mâché entitled: "Opera", "Air" and "Smoke". The one placed in the middle -- "Air" -- immediately reminds the viewer of a WWI gas mask. It was created a century after that conflict and a decade before what is currently happening beyond Poland's eastern border.

  That is telling -- that there are artists whose intuition foretells visions of something that they themselves do not necessarily understand.

  Let me give an example: at the very beginning of the 2000s, Eidrigevicius took up staged photography. His protagonist -- a male, half-naked figure -- has a face covered with a mask with an enormous, grotesque nose. I used to read it as a reference to Collodi's "Pinocchio" (which also gives us the possibility of multiple interpretations). Now I see it as a prophecy of a pandemic. A plague doctor, a figure depicted so well during the plagues of old, was also characterized by a mask with an elongated nose/helmet in which herbs were deposited to kill the nightmarish smell of the corpses of plague victims. And according to the belief of the times, such masks protected the medic from infection. This practice has been emulated many times during the COVID-19 plague. True, yet Stasys created this series 20 years ago.

  Before

  Even before the “!Reactions” exhibition opened, its failure was already being trumpeted. Contrary to the naysayers' forecasts, the opening drew eager crowds. Now every weekend, Zachęta is under siege. It used be said that the public votes with its feet. Et voila!

  –Monika Małkowska

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

 –Translated by Agnieszka Rakoczy

"Stasys Eidrigevičius !Reactions" is the first exhibition by this artist at Zachęta. Address: Zachęta National Gallery of Art. Pl. Małachowskiego 3 in Warsaw. Until April 11, 2023.

Curators: Jūratė Čerškutė, Ignacy Eidrigevičius

  2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Eidrigevičius graduating from the Art Institute in Vilnius (now Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts) and his decision to choose his professional path. The exhibition at Zachęta is under the honorary patronage of His Excellency Eduardas Borisovas, Ambassador of the Republic of Lithuania to Poland. Media patronage: TVP Kultura.