Volare — meaning “to fly.” This is the title of an exhibition presenting paintings by Bogumil Ksiazek, whose opening took place during Polish Aviation Day.
Volare is an instalment of the Flights series, originally inspired by the dream of the peasant visionary Jan Wnek to rise into the air. The painter ventures into a surprising experiment within his own discipline, testing how the principles of flying machine design can influence the painterly effect. He builds his paintings much as Wnek constructed his flights — as lightly as possible, stripping away everything superfluous, exposing structural elements, using semi-transparent, tightly stretched canvas.
In the case of a painting, however, the driving element is not air but light — whose rhythms and effects are an inherent component of the work’s “coming into being.”
Popular in the 1930s, the Italian branch of Futurism known as aeropittura involved painting pictures by professional artists based on the experience of flying in an aeroplane and observing previously unknown perspectives of the world. Inspired by this, abstract afterimages painted with an airbrush became an equal dimension — alongside formal assumptions — of the paintings of Bogumil Ksiazek, intensifying the impression of lightness and soaring.
![Tullio Crali, Upside Down Loop (Death Loop) (Granvolta rovesciata [Giro della morte]), 1938. Oil on panel, 80 x 60 cm. Collection of Luce Marinetti, Rome © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Photo: Studio Boys, Rome](https://muzeumlotnictwa.pl/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/futurism_aeropittura_crali_aeropittura_di_guerra-761x1024.jpg)
Bogumil Ksiazek was born in 1974. He studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. He graduated in 2000 from the studio of Slawomir Karpowicz. After completing his studies, he spent seven years in Tuscany, where he met Silvio Loffredo and Mario Luzi. Until 2009 he lived and worked in Florence and Tizzano. He is a lecturer at the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, where since 2019 he has led an interdisciplinary studio.
Bogumil Ksiazek is a laureate of, among others, the Witold Wojtkiewicz Award 2024 for the exhibition FLIGHTS.
An event accompanying the opening, which took place during Polish Aviation Day on 25 August, was the “Flying Painting” workshop organised at our Museum by the BWA Sokol Contemporary Art Gallery of the Malopolska Cultural Centre SOKOL in Nowy Sacz.
During the workshop, participants created their own flying constructions — kites on which they painted pictures.
The exhibition was on display at our Museum until 1 October. We warmly invite you!
