"For Magdalena Daniec, painting is a way of life, as she herself claims. It also serves as an ideal medium for storytelling. Daniec is an accomplished narrator; however, rather than presenting linear narratives governed by clear cause-and-effect relationships, her works offer fragments of imagined stories—suggestive glimpses that invite viewers to explore and interpret. This impression is further intensified by both the techniques she employs and the way her works are constructed.

Daniec frequently uses collage, combining oil and acrylic paints, and occasionally monotype, to create a sense of layered depth and quasi-spatiality. Her canvases encourage viewers to look “deeper,” beyond the frame of the painting itself. They often include the centuries-old motif of the “painting within a painting,” offering rectangular windows or irregular openings into nested, box-like visual tales. Her distance from “pure” oil painting techniques reflects not only her fascination with diverse textures and surfaces, but also the very process of creating her works. The starting point for many of her paintings lies in found objects—fragments of old letters, postcards, or ready-made elements—which the artist assigns a carefully determined place within the composition.

Color plays a vital emotional role in her work. One might venture to suggest that the artist would agree with Leon Tarasewicz, who once remarked that in painting it is impossible to avoid color, just as it is impossible to live without breathing. Red, often paired with white and black, dominates her winter palette, bringing warmth and energy. In contrast, cool blues and emerald greens appear in summer, offering calm and refreshment. Subtle grays allow for nuanced tonal transitions, revealing the artist’s sensitivity to value shifts and to the construction of the painting’s chromatic layer.

Magdalena Daniec’s art is a compelling synthesis of the personal and the universal—a series of ever-evolving stories that reflect on everyday experience and on both the micro and macro scale."

Agnieszka Jankowska-Marzec

photos of the exhibition: Marek Błażucki / Love IDAA