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 Mandos

  • 2024-2025
    Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (Prof. Helen Verhoeven)

  • 2019–2024
    Gerrit Rietveld Academie, DOGtime, Expanded Painting

  • 2023–2024 (Sep–Feb)
    Studio Assistant, Merijn Bolink

  • 2023 (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 Ophuis

  • 2025 (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



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