Rafal Olbinski, The Catch, 2022

drawing in pencil on paper, 50.00 x 70.00 cm

Rafal Olbinski was born in 1943 in Kielce. After graduating from the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology, he emigrated to the United States, where he quickly gained fame as an acclaimed poster artist, illustrator, painter. He taught at the prestigious School of Visual Arts in New York, among others. His work has been featured on the covers of such prominent magazines as Newsweek, Time, Der Spigel and Stern. In his work he uses a unique, authorial surrealist style that surprises, delights and seduces.The artist has received more than 150 prestigious national and international awards and honors. In 1994, he won the Prix Savignac, the equivalent of an Oscar, in Paris for the most significant poster of the year. In 2002, selected paintings by Olbinski were placed alongside the work of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, among others, in a projection at Grand Central Station in New York honoring Earth Day. In 2006, the President of the Republic of Poland honored the artist with the gold medal for Merit to Culture Gloria Artis, and in 2012 with the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. Olbinski's works can be found in recognized collections of contemporary art, as well as in private and corporate collections from Japan to Europe to the United States. In 2022, he was the only artist from Poland to represent European art at the Beijing Art Biennale. For the past few years, his vast body of work has been enriched by sculptures that elaborate on poster and painting motifs in space.