The Magic of Illustrations. The Baltic Meetings of Illustrators organised by the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre.

Book illustration is a field of art that is becoming increasingly popular. In Poland it mostly developed during the communist era, but the interest in this domain has been revived recently. The 18th edition of the Baltic Meetings of Illustrators was recently organised in Gdańsk by the Baltic Sea Cultural Centre. It is a project aimed at demonstrating the achievements of outstanding artists dealing with illustration. The event was accompanied by meetings and workshops, thanks to which the audience had an opportunity to get to know the secrets of their work in theory and practice.

The Baltic Meetings of Illustrators also feature the “Illustrator” Illustrated Communication Festival, a perfect occasion to meet the representatives of the sector. The two days of the event, 13 and 14 October, saw numerous workshops and a conference on illustration. The guest list included such artists as Ola Niepsuj, Bolesław Chromry, Kensuke Koike and Julia Schimautz. The leitmotif of this year’s conference was “Rediscovering illustration”. In recent years, or even months, changes have been taking place at an increasing pace, and the things and phenomena that we know very well need to be discovered anew, and we must respond to them, anticipate, or even adapt to them. The speakers featuring the “Illustrator” event talked about the discoveries that refer to themselves and their creative work, the challenges that reality has in stock for them and the opportunities that are worth exploring.

The 18th Baltic Meetings of Illustrators refers to the 700th anniversary of the foundation of Vilnius. The organisers decided to invite Stasys Eidrigevičius, an artist with a Lithuanian background. His selected works were showcased at an exhibition entitled Three Stories, and the artist himself attended meetings with the audience several times. In addition to Eidrigevičius, renowned Lithuanian illustrators, Sigutė Chlebinskaitė and Patricija Bliuj-Stodulska, were invited to hold workshops.

Three books, three stories

When a discussion was held about what works by Stasys Eidrigevičius should be presented at the exhibition, the organisers of the festival and the curator, who is also the artist’s son, Ignacy Eidrigevičius, decided to refer to Polish-Lithuanian relations. They selected illustrations for three books, one of them published in Poland, another one in Lithuania, and the last one combining the two countries. The illustrations in these three books are the eponymous three stories. Not only three literary stories but also three stories about illustration.

“Angry Little Witch” by Václav Čtvrtek was released by the National Publishing Agency in 1978.  Eidrigevičius graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vilnius in 1973. “In 1978, I was offered to prepare illustrations for the book in Vilnius and in Warsaw, where I was a frequent guest at the time,” said the artist. He did not sign his name in “Angry Little Witch,” but used a pseudonym, S. Siulski, because he did not have a Polish permanent residence card. He moved to Warsaw in 1980. In the 1970s, the artist created miniature paintings based on metaphor, surrealism, and fantasy. With their painting-like features, gouache illustrations for “Angry Little Witch” are a clear reference to those works. The illustrations have a dark tonality, which distinguishes them from the colour schemes typical for children’s literature, despite the brighter accents. As Eidrigevičius said: “The world of illustration was my fulfilment as the world of fairy tales. It was a refuge from reality in the years of oppression.”

In the same year, Eidrigevičius illustrated a Lithuanian publication, a book entitled “Už nevarstomų duru” (Behind Closed Doors) by Kazys Saja. The artist used a completely different technique here. He made pen & ink drawings and on their basis, he prepared works for printing using the zincography process. These works have a much more graphic character. The subject matter is also different. Between the lines, Saja incorporated critical views about the socialist regime. Eidrigevičius followed the lead, creating his metaphors of enslavement and hidden dreams about freedom, which were also a characteristic feature of his earliest works – bookplates and miniature paintings. Unlike “Angry Little Witch”, the book does not belong to the category of children’s literature. However, as the author noted: “Watching illustrations, adults can engage in a dialogue with their life experience. Even when children’s books are concerned, adults are the ones to decide whether to buy a given book, if they browse it and think that the illustrations are nice. Adults perceive illustrations through the lens of their erudition and sensitivity to art.”

The third series includes illustrations for Adam Mickiewicz’s “Ballads and Romances”. The drawings were created as early as the 1980s but remained hidden for a long time due to political transformation and the complex situation in the publishing market at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. They were first displayed at an exhibition entitled “Lithuania. My Homeland … Adam Mickiewicz and  Stasys Eidrigevičius” at the Museum of Literature in Warsaw in 2018. They were released in print in 2022 in a bilingual Polish and Lithuanian publication of the Vilnius University, entitled „Poezye Adama Mickiewicza. Tom pierwszy/Adomo Mickevičiaus Poezija. Pirmas tomas” (Poetry by Adam Mickewicz. Volume One). In his illustrations, Statys interpreted selected ballads through his own imagination and artistic language, combining graphic art techniques and painting – pencil and watercolour. The works evoke the impression of illustrations within an illustration, superimposing various backgrounds, as if there were internal windows or images within an image, which enhances the effect of transcending realities, fairy tales, and the surreal play on associations. This way, he built his metaphorical images and told his personal story, inspired by Adam Mickiewicz’s works. The artist said: “An image placed next to a text draws the readers’ attention and is sometimes more important than the text itself. The artist’s vision may exist alongside the text because the art of illustration is not mathematics. I create illustrations as my metaphors which may also function as a stand-alone image.”

Techniques and imagination

Not only does each of the illustrations tell a different story, but also represents a different technique. “When I illustrate, the first question I ask myself is about the technique to choose, because it affects how the book will unfold. It provides an opportunity to create new artistic situations. The precision and the painting nature of illustrations will also depend on the selected technique,” asserted the artist. Given that, we can explore the painting-like adventures of a devil from Angry Little Witch, graphic and surrealist metaphors of enslavement, and illustrations in Mickiewicz’s works which are far from literary.

The three series are supplemented by a large-scale drawing entitled Feeding my Son. “It’s really me, feeding the current curator of the exhibition,” said Stasys Eidrigevičius. The drawing shows a man giving a child a spoonful with a pyramid of objects and figures piling up and providing an opportunity to create a single story or multiple stories illustrated by the artist. There would surely be plenty to choose from, as Eidrigevičius illustrated over 40 books, not only for Polish and Lithuanian publishing houses, but also for publications released in many other countries. He has numerous award-winning works in his portfolio. As he said: “I was awarded the Grand Prix in illustration in Barcelona, Bratislava, and Belgrade. It means that the world appreciates my style and the way I manage to keep my real self, not give in to the publisher’s wishes or to commercial considerations. Brigite Sidjanski, a publisher from Zurich, told me: “I garner awards for books illustrated by Statys, and earn money with other authors.”

We also have a chance to immerse ourselves in the world of the artist’s unique imagination, by viewing the illustrations showcased at the exhibition and juxtaposing them with the text they refer to, as the books where the works can be found are also available for the viewers.