Tadeusz Baranowski

• born 1945
• born in Zamość
• he lives and creates his works in Warsaw
• he specializes in illustrations, comics, painting and functional graphic arts

“But, Chief, why Chief… It is me who should apologise.”

He studied at the Faculty of Graphic Arts and Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1969, he graduated from prof. Artur Nacht-Samborski and prof. Aleksander Kobzdej’s Study of Illustration, Posters and Graphic Arts. He has participated in exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including in Helsinki, Berlin, Warsaw, Lublin and Sopot.

The most important publications: “Na co dybie w wielorybie czubek nosa Eskimosa” (story and art), Młodzieżowa Agencja Wydawnicza (MAW), 1980; “Skąd się bierze woda sodowa” (story and art), MAW, 1983; “Antresolka profesorka Nerwosolka” (story and art), MAW, 1985; “Podróż smokiem Diplodokiem” (story and art), MAW, 1986; Jacques Brel, “J’arrive” (four pages for the song titled “Quand on n’a que l’amour”), International © Brain Factory Ltd., 1987; “Orient Men, Forewer” (story and art), Egmont, 2002; “Tffffuj, do bani z takim komiksem” (story and art), Orient Men i Spółka, 2005; “Na wypadek wszelki, Woda, Soda i Bąbelki (oraz Kudłaczki) ” (story and art), Ongrys, 2010.

The most important awards and distinctions: two distinctions in the easel painting competition in Łódź, 1972; Bronze Cross of Merit for the new colourful graphic scheme for “Świat Młodych”. 1976; Gold Audience and Reviewers’ Medal in the comics festival in Belgium, 1989; Silver Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis, 2007.

The most recognizable features of Tadeusz Baranowski’s style include expressive and rounded strokes, overdrawn characters and vivid water colours. What is also characteristic of his comics is alive and rich flora and fauna, whose representatives are often characters of his surrealistic and humorous stories.
Baranowski’s comics illustrations cannot be discussed without mentioning their linguistic aspects and composition.
His multi-layer sense of humour, which is non-translatable into other languages, includes not only absurd linguistic jokes present in dialogues, which became permanent elements of pop culture, but also visual jokes consisting in plays with the comics convention and the page composition. The artist blurs the borderlines between the world of comics and the page, between characters and readers as well as between the characters and the author. The characters are aware that they are comics characters and that there is the author present; they often talk to him and try to influence the story by demanding specific adventures. Baranowski often treats elements of the comics, which are usually “transparent” and do not belong to the world of cartoon, as fragments of a drawing. Readers are drawn into the depicted world by a panel which the characters may leave or by letters which they may touch. Owing to the interactions between the characters and such elements, the artist achieves an effect of three-dimensionality, which is not typical for comics.
Although Baranowski’s cartoons are addressed at younger readers, it is only adults that may understand all linguistic jokes and observe elements in a panel frame which bring additional meanings to the story.

Tadeusz Baranowski Gallery

More information about the artist: tadeuszbaranowski.com