RE:CHAIN REACTION 2026

Looking – watercolours on mountain themes

Zofia Bolechowska

The exhibition in the café-exhibition space of the Main Building of the Tatra Museum presents the artist's works in watercolour, pastel, watercolour pencil and acrylic. All of them were created directly in contact with the reality of the mountains and nature.

Zofia Bolechowska – born in Zakopane, graduated from the PLSP im. Antoniego Kenara, majoring in sculpture. She obtained a diploma in Multimedia Art and Painting at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. She also studied at ASP Warsaw in the Mural Painting Studio under Professor Edward Tarkowski. The artist's field of activity covers painting, multimedia work and educational projects. She creates works in the mountains and partly exhibits them there, blending them into the elements of the landscape.

The exhibition is the first part of the RE:CHAIN REACTION 2026 cycle, carried out by the Association of Polish Visual Artists, Zakopane District, in the space of the Tatra Museum.

The exhibition can be viewed from 8 to 31 August 2026 in the Main Building of the Tatra Museum, ul. Krupówki 10.

Interplay of Gazes

Ewa Bartosz-Mazuś i Zofia Szwajnos

About the artists:

Ewa Bartosz-Mazuś

Born in Zakopane, where she began her artistic path. Graduate of the State High School of Fine Arts im. Antoni Kenar in Zakopane, specialising in sculpture.

She developed her interest in textiles, among other things, as an assistant in the artistic textile studio of Marta Gąsienica-Szostak. She obtained the qualifications of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage to practise as a visual artist in the field of applied art, in the scope of artistic textiles. Member of the Association of Polish Visual Artists, Zakopane branch.

Her work moves within the fields of tapestry, weaving miniatures, spatial forms, felt, natural dyeing and mixed techniques. She treats fibre as a medium of almost unlimited possibilities, allowing her to combine matter, colour, structure and space. The richness of textile techniques becomes for her a starting point for experiment and the search for unobvious formal solutions. Her work grows out of a dialogue between the tradition of artistic textiles and the need to find a contemporary language of expression. Of particular importance to her are the materiality of the fibre, its texture and organic quality, and the possibilities of transforming a flat form into a spatial object.

For many years she was associated with the Tatra Centre of Culture and Sport "Jutrzenka" in Zakopane, where she led workshops in textiles, ceramics and glass painting. For her teaching activity she was honoured with the Medal of the National Education Commission. Her students won numerous prizes in art competitions.

Author of solo exhibitions and participant in group exhibitions in Poland and abroad. She took part in national and international art plein-air events.

Laureate and awarded, among others, at:

• BIAMT – International Biennial of Miniature Arts in Timișoara – 2nd prize
• 9th From Lausanne to Beijing in China – award
• Concorso Internazionale di Arazzo a Fiber Art – 3rd prize
• 2nd prize in Parma and the Organisers' Award Arcadia and an award for the project
• XLVI International Fibre Art Exhibition in Kowary – honourable mention
• International Biennial of Artistic Linen Textile in Krosno – nomination for the award and honourable mention

Zofia Szwajnos (z domu Naglak)

For many years associated with the Tygodnik Podhalański weekly, where she worked as a computer graphic designer and photojournalist.

She is a graduate of the State High School of Fine Arts im. Antoni Kenar in Zakopane, majoring in sculpture, and of the Warsaw School of Advertising, Graphic Arts faculty, where she earned the title of advertising organisation technician.

Zofia Szwajnos's work combines various fields of art – sculpture, painting, photography and graphics – with human beings and inspiration from nature as the common denominator. Mountains hold a special place in her work – a space she loves and in which she spends every free moment.…