Mikolaj Malesza, A Hen, Oil on Board, 2005

Mikolaj Malesza is a Polish artist, born in 1954. He studied interior architecture at the Fine Arts Academy in Warsaw and received a degree with honors in 1979. Painter and designer, Malesza's work stands out due to its poetic nostalgia, evolving in an imaginary world, just like fairy tales for children. The artist draws inspiration from naive art, surrealism and abstract, using simple shapes and shortcuts in his work. He has realized as lot of stagings with Ewa Sokol, to realize a large number of theater plays for children. Mikolaj Malesza's works have been presented in more than twenty individual exhibitions in Europe, U.S.A and Japan. He received several prizes and distinctions besides the second prize during the 37th fair of the National exhibition of visual arts in Radom in 1984 and the third prize during the 13thnational painting competition in 1987. He is the author of about 40 stagings, he was awarded at the International Festival of Visual Art ANIMACJE in 2002 in Bielsko-Biala and has been nominated three times as the winner of the Fringe First Theater Festival at Edinburgh.