Katarzyna Baldyga (b. 1988) grew up in the rural-industrial region of Silesia, Poland. She graduated in law in Wrocław in 2012 and worked in the Prosecution Service. Moved to the Netherlands in 2018, where she graduated from DOGtime programme at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. She travelled to Leipzig to engage with the New Leipzig School.
In 2024 she began a full-time artistic practice with studios in Amsterdam and Dresden. Her work, Searching for What Can’t Be Put Into Words, was acquired by Museum Voorlinden, while Starfish entered the Collectie Rijksoverheid. In 2024 she received the Ron Mandos Young Blood Award.
She co-founded OFFO, a collective that organizes exhibitions in non-traditional spaces.
Artist Statement
I work through process-driven layered paintings and with provisional maquettes. My imagery is in constant flux, but materiality is central to my practice. I respond intuitively to the unpredictability, immediacy of paint and painting.
The worlds I depict are imagined or half-remembered, forming fragile realities. These are internal landscape and external uncertainties.
For me, paint, painting, and paintings are forces able to charge, open up, strangle, tell a story, bounce joyously, conceal and reveal, twist and surprise, change points of view, drip, fall apart, to be real and illusionary, complicated and simple, smooth and rough, go over, under and through. They can embody all of these qualities simultaneously, surpassing presupposed contradictions and impossibilities.
Exhibitions
2025
Movement with OFFO collective, Chassé Dance Studios, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 10 Oct–Feb
Bedrock, Young Collectors Circle, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 24 May–5 Sep
Amsterdam Art Week, Open Studio, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 24 May
Art Rotterdam, with Galerie Ron Mandos, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 27–29 Mar
Between Moon and Earth, De Bouwput, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 26 Mar
2024
State of Art, Stichting Tiny V, Arnhem, The Netherlands, 23 Nov–1 Dec
BoG, Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 26 Jul–15 Sep
Graduation Show, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 3–7 Jul
2023
Si. Si. Spex. #13, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 6 Dec
Group Exhibition, Garage Ost, Leipzig, Germany, 7 Jul
2022
We Are Already Gone, Sisi Expo, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Jun
Si. Si. Spex. #12, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 6 Dec
2021
Group Exhibition, ISO, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Dec
Group Exhibition, Orangerie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 4–6 Jun
OFFO Collective, Online, Jun
Education and Professional Background
2024-2025
project artist at Galerie Ron Mandos2024-2025
Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (Prof. Helen Verhoeven)2019–2024
Gerrit Rietveld Academie, DOGtime, Expanded Painting2023–2024 (Sep–Feb)
Studio Assistant, Merijn Bolink2023 (Apr–Jul)
Erasmus Semester, HGB Leipzig (Prof. Anne Speier)
Residencies and Workshops
2025 (19–20 Jun)
On Violence, Narrative and Staging – Lecture and Workshop with Ronald Ophuis2025 (Mar)
AGA Lab Residency, Amsterdam
Awards and Recognition
recipient of Mondiraan Fund Artist Start grant, 2026
recipient of Stichting Tiny V grant, 2025
The Young Blood Award, 2024
Amstelveense Kunstprijs nomination, 2024
Buning Brongers nomination, 2024
Bachelor thesis distinction, Gerrit Rietveld Academy Assembly Hall, 2024
Collections
Museum Voorlinden
Rijksoverheid
Stichting Tiny V
Press and Mentions
1606 Magazine: Katarzyna Baldyga with guest curator Sheila Verdegaal, 2025
Gallery Viewer: Best of Graduates 2024
https://galleryviewer.com/en/article/2497/best-of-graduates-2024Metropolis M: Young Blood Award 2024 to Katarzyna Bałdygahttps://metropolism.com/nl/feature/ron-mandos-young-blood-award-2024-to-katarzyna-baldyga/
Lost Painters: Eindexamen Expositie: Rietveld Amsterdam, 2024
https://www.lost-painters.nl/eindexamen-expositie-rietveld-amsterdam-2024/