Malgorzata (Gosia) Seweryn

Luc Van den Briele introduces the exlibris work of Malgorzata Seweryn, born in Poland in 1971. She is not unknown in Flanders, for 1999 and 2000 she was at the academy in Antwerp and she followed workshops at the Frans Masereel Centre. For her personal exlibris (top left, p.305) she uses her pet-name Gosia; the crown in this exlibris has became her distinguishing mark. It wascreated in 1998 while she was workingon series of lithographies about the game of chess. Almost half of her bookplates are coloured linocuts; about a fourthfails in the category of computer reproduced design and a still smaller number is in serigraphy, lithography or of mixed techniques. Her exlibris worklist contains nearly 200 numbers.

The exlibris for Edward Hartwig (bottom left, p. 305) is a linocut. In 1997 Gosia Seweryn made a thesis on this Polish art. Photographer. The willows on the bookplate areinspired by a photo book thet he published on that theme.He was gladly surprised and very pleased with it. For the authoress Urszula Zych she made an exlibris with a wingedpen (bottom right, p.305). The four exlibris on page 306 are also bookplates for well-known persons. Zygmunt Konieczny is a composer; Piotr Kunze is a professor at hte academy of arts in Krakow and also well-known poster designer; Wislawa Szymborska and Czeslaw Milosz are both poets of international repute. On page 307 three exlibrises are reproduced for people Gosia Seweryn met in Antwerp: the artists Ingrid Ledent and Charles Van Gisbergen and the librarian of the academy Jef Van Gool. The theme of the first exlibris is based on old houses in Bruges, the other two bookplates are more abstract. With the exlibris for Yolande Vingerhoed reproduced at the top of page 308 (a five-coloured lithography) she returnes to a more recognizable but somewhat distorted reality. She met the owner during an open-door day in Kasterlee. Gosia Seweryn’s worklist contains also ten ex-eroticis, two-coloured linocuts with a rather unusual abstract erotic composition. There are real interplay of forces between the sharp triangles of pointed breasts and penis and the lovely image of having rhythm of love between man and woman. Never before have we seen exlibris where eroticism has been approched in such an abstract way. There are two examples of these erotic exlibris at the bottom of page 308. A lot of Gosia Seweryn’s works arouses enough artistic tension to make us look out for what she will create in the near future.