Artist:Olbinski
Title:Illusive Specificity of Random Compliments
Image Size:24" x 24"
Medium:Lithograph
About the Artist:With a reputation that spans the globe, Rafal Olbinski is best known for his role as an internationally acclaimed designer of opera house posters and for creating the covers of hundreds of magazines, from Time to Newsweek to The New Yorker.

Born in Kielce, Poland in 1945, Olbinski studied architecture before dedicating himself to painting and design. Olbinski’s lush images are layered with complex psychology. He does not paint the landscape of scientific reality, but rather maps the interiors of the mind. Like Dali and Magritte before him, Olbinski’s work has poetic resonance—he depicts the mind as a theater of dreams, with new attractions around every corner.

Commissioned by Allegro Music to complete a series of album covers for their opera series, Olbinski has achieved a reputation as the image-maker of opera. The Nation hails him as a “latter-day Dali” and The New York Times remarks that if you don’t know his name, “Odds are you know his paintings.”

Olbinski is involved in projects on nearly every continent. In Poland, he is completing three public murals to be unveiled in Spring 2007; In Bangkok, he juried the 2006 International Film Festival; In Germany, an exhibition of his work is currently traveling across the country.

Well known for his luxurious depictions of women, Olbinski’s nudes are both classical and controversial. He explores the mysterious aura of women who, although aloof, beckon to the viewer. “I believe that every artist falls in love with his work,” Olbinskisays, “especially when you paint women.” A master of technique, he often draws on the works of Goya and Botticelli for inspiration.

As in Goya’s time, the female form has the power to incite controversy. Recent disputes erupted over Olbinski’s image of a bare-breasted mermaid, designed for the 2006 Miss World contest in Poland. As a concession to Polish officials, Olbinski painted a scarf across the mermaid’s breast.

“Poetic humor is a quality rarely found in the fine arts,” says Andre Parinuad, President of the International Arts Salon in Paris. “Rafal Olbinski has this gift. He wants to show us that our imagination is a magical world which we are recreating forever. He draws us into a different universe, and forces us to use our eyes to participate in a marvelous world which is the true dimension of dreams.”