The Kontrapost Artists’ Association was founded in 2001 (registered with Companies House thanks Iwona Dobrzańska’s work) by a group of painters united round a common idea of figurative art – socially engaged, focused on concrete motifs, devoted to man and his problems in contemporary world but far from the ideas associated with the pop‑art of the early 2000s. Since its inception, Kontrapost painting has been centered on individualized artistic form. „It is about penetrating problems in such a way that would satisfy the artists who ask questions through their paintings as well as the audience who want to be active participants of the situations in question” – as Grzegorz Wnęk wrote in a paper accompanying the In Our Image and Likeness exhibition. The group consists mainly of graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, educated by its professors – Jacek Waltoś and Stanisław Rodziński. The main founder of the group was Grzegorz Bednarski. In the beginning, the association united about a dozen artists from different fields. The group gradually took the present shape of a few closely connected painters, including those who most often participate in Kontrapost exhibitions: Beata Bigaj, Kinga Nowak, Rafał Pacześniak and Grzegorz Wnęk. So far the association has organized the following exhibitions: 2001 – In Our Image and Likeness, Krypta u Pijarów Gallery, Krakow; 2001 – The Beauty of Suggestion, the City Center of Culture, Olsztyn; 2003 – fish, bacon and a quarter of an ox, Galeria ZPAP „PRYZMAT”, Krakow, Muzeum Lubuskie im. J.Dekerta, Gorzów Wielkopolski; 2004 – Bigaj, Kubiak, Nowak, Wnęk, CSW „Solvay”, Krakow.

"Paintings displayed on this exhibition result from the need to present the world in all its complexity. The title reflects the painters’ longing for art that would be realistic, depictive. However, we do not understand realism as uncreative copying, depiction of the reality but as a medium of inter‑ pretation, depiction through an individual, creative form. The reality shown in our paintings is often narrative, it piles up and mixes time and space. We are interested in the story, multi‑layered and multi‑dimensional as it might be. The pic‑ tures result from direct observation as well as from feelings, premonitions, memories, dreams, reflections of events. It seems that such an approach gives us a chance to grasp what lies deeper, under the surface of simple realistic depiction. To see the world as a whole, with all its temporal and spatial complexity, a feeling for what is ungraspable and unnamed, can perhaps be most fully expressed exactly through the kind of painting that comes to the painter".