Blazing Saddles
Wincenty Czwartos | Stanisław Czwartos
Venue: SoA Gallery / Skowronscy Art
Dates: 7 May — 4 July 2026
Curator: Dr Marcel Skierski
Blazing Saddles, an exhibition by Wincenty and Stanisław Czwartos, is a painterly test of whether traditional forms can still respond adequately to a contemporary world shaken at its foundations. Through a dialogue between the dignity of historical painting and subtle irony, the artists examine whether classical motifs – from Baroque equestrian portraits to symbols rooted in antiquity — can still serve as a credible language for describing today’s social, political and civilisational conflicts.
Can painting that consciously employs traditional means and does not reject the burden of art history still have critical force today? In the age of digital revolution, can the canvas remain an adequate tool for commenting on reality? The exhibition presents two perspectives on modernity, filtered through the centuries-old legacy of European art. Within the gallery space, an atmosphere of solemnity is created, yet stripped of tiresome pathos. It is accompanied by intelligent irony, through which classical motifs acquire new and often unsettling meanings.
Wincenty and Stanisław Czwartos belong to a current in recent Polish painting that turns boldly towards the classical tradition. In their work, however, one will not find a simple gesture of deconstruction or a desire to ridicule tradition. Instead, their paintings offer conscious borrowings, erudite inspirations and charged dialogues with the old masters. Beneath the layer of historical costume lies a sensitivity to current social and political phenomena, which, in their hands, acquire a universal dimension.
A Dialogue Between Two Painterly Strategies
The exhibition’s narrative is built around a compelling dialogue between the two artists. What binds their work together is a sense of enigma. The apparent simplicity of their images reveals itself as a labyrinth of references, in which each motif opens onto further layers of meaning. While Wincenty’s painting is grounded in the persistent exploration of a single motif and the shifting of its meanings through detail, Stanisław’s work is shaped by rhythm, repetition, symbolic condensation and a modular construction of the depicted world.
Wincenty Czwartos creates dignified equestrian portraits into which he inserts codes of modernity. The characteristic blue appearing in his works may be read as a dialogue with Andrzej Wróblewski — a colour that becomes a sign of death, absence and a figure already lost. The form of the saddle, present in works such as Funeral Wreath, Ravens and Crows and Night Knight, evokes associations with the Suprematist language of Kazimir Malevich. This gesture suggests a subversive thesis: the symbolic victory of tradition over the modernist avant-garde.
A careful observer will also discover quotations from the old masters. The titular Night Knight bears the face of James Stuart, Duke of Richmond, known from a portrait by Anthony van Dyck. In this way, Wincenty’s painting does not simply reconstruct the past; rather, it activates it as a living field of tension — between history, memory, war and the contemporary image of heroism.
Ancient Symbols and Contemporary Crisis
Stanisław Czwartos adopts a different strategy. His paintings are saturated with ambiguous symbols, among which the figure of the bull occupies a special place. The animal becomes, at once, a cruel instrument of torture — the Brazen Bull of Phalaris — an idolatrous golden calf and the mythological bull from the story of the abduction of Europa. This last reference opens up a particularly bitter commentary on the contemporary social and political condition.
In Stanisław Czwartos’s world, decapitated riders appear, desperately trying to remain mounted on the backs of galloping horses. Their dramatic condition becomes an image of a civilisation losing its orientation, its head and its capacity for self-determination. Ancient myth is transferred into the register of contemporary crisis — not as illustration, but as a structure in which violence, chaos and the desire for control return in new forms.
The confrontation of these two artistic positions allows us to trace a path from the premonition of crisis to its bloody consequences. Stanisław’s symbols refer to the twilight of civilisation and to a borderline situation. The natural continuation of these upheavals is armed conflict, to which Wincenty’s work refers. His riders are not only heroic figures; they are also young boys sent to war. Although they are granted the posthumous glory of portraits and elevated slogans, it is they who bear the consequences of decisions made far from the battlefield.
Monumentality, Irony and Painterly Riddles
The monumentality of the themes is reflected in the scale of the works. Most of the pieces gathered in the exhibition are large-format oil paintings, whose physical presence intensifies the tension between pathos and irony. The solemnity of Wincenty’s equestrian portraits and Stanisław’s antique figures corresponds with their format, yet the artists continuously engage the viewer in a subtle game. Baroque horses acquire an almost comic-book charm, while the scene with the golden calf takes on the energy of a wild rodeo.
The paintings of the Czwartos brothers demand time from the viewer. For the patient observer, following the movement of the brush across the canvas, they reveal a network of hidden connections, quotations and semantic shifts. These are painterly riddles through which the artists construct a story about the contemporary world — a world suspended between the weight of inheritance and the brutality of current events.
Blazing Saddles does not offer ready-made answers. Rather, the exhibition sharpens our attention to the fractures within reality and asks what remains durable in the face of crisis. Leaving the gallery, one may wonder whether we ourselves are not those riders: suspended between the dignity of tradition and the chaos of the present. In a world that seems to be losing its head, can we still stay in the saddle?
