The Horrors of the Youth Painting

MFA, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Eliza Kołodziej is a Polish painter working primarily in oil. Her practice centers around uninhabited urban and semi-natural spaces—walls, bushes, empty lots, paths between buildings. These places seem familiar but carry an unsettling stillness, as if caught just before or just after something happened. Each painting is carefully constructed, with close attention to light, surface tension, and spatial framing. There is no human figure, but traces of presence remain. Her palette leans toward muted, cool tones with subtle contrast and occasional warmth. Compositions are quiet but charged. Stillness does not equal calm. Alongside painting, Kołodziej creates contemporary tapestries using traditional weaving techniques. She treats them as tactile remnants—objects that belong to the same post-human world as her paintings. This textile work informs her sensitivity to texture and material decay, often echoing the same themes of abandonment and persistence. Kołodziej holds an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She paints what lingers—what is left behind, what resists disappearance.