In the Land of Happy People there are tiny and cosy houses. They are neighbouring houses standing next to one another along the main road. Above their colourful roofs, a tower stands out, made of metal, like the one in Paris. Ladders have been set here and there and they are so high that they almost reach the huge blue cloud. A circus tent has been put up nearby. It takes a short time to get to the beach whose hot sand has assumed the shade of an orange. The sun, red-hot, looks at the ball bounced into the air, which nearly hits the canopy of a parachute joyfully spread over the sea of sand. Crests of colourful palm trees with their fresh coolness augur the oncoming evening. It is only a Concorde - like a majestic bird which will cross the sky to take away people's dreams to the Wide World and street-lamps which will brighten empty streets with their warm light.

The Moon which floats over the town is red like stars whose tempting shine vies with the flares of fireworks, and their shapes, ambivalent and attracting, promise fulfilment to lovers. Sputniks and spaceships secretly take away explorers of the undiscovered to the Planets of Equally Happy People. Those who are left down, in the land of dream, with their eyes closed, can experience a fantastic sensual world of organic erotic forms, where the next Happy Man will hatch out of an egg.

This naive yet very emotional image, close to the childlike perception of the world, originating in dreams and imagination, undoubtedly has its roots in strong affirmation of life. And it is undoubtedly maintained by memories of a keen observer - a traveller to Spain, France or Germany and by interests in other exotic and old cultures. However, is it an ultimate reflection of real, experienced beauty? Isn't it, in the most hidden layers, only an expression of a longing for what does not really exist, what we have not experienced yet, what we still try to achieve?

In the etudes and sonatas on happiness composed by Krystyna Matusiak there are no human figures. Nobody walks down the street, lounges on the hot beaches, enjoys coolness of Spanish palms.

Friendly towns with their little joys. Big cities congested with people and uninhabited at the same time. As even in such a world you can be a stranger. By solitude of an artist in the world of material things. By separation of a man longing for lovers' affection or the joy of maternity.

It was long ago when the artist got away from people treated as an object of her artistic interest. Nearly 20 years ago her lithographs depicted couples in an affectionate embrace, her canvases presented nudes and circus artists, and still 10 years ago in the cycle of collages she succeeded in making dare, full of grotesque observation characteristics of human types. Ach te baby! (Those women!) the artist shrieked in the title of her work and by means of a few requisites - emblems such as 'a made-up eye', showy jewellery, a cigarette provocatively kept between the lips, formed significant satirical simplifications. Like in Pięknotyła (A Nice-backed Beauty) whose attribute was a clearly exposed characteristic part of a human body.

This kind of irony maintained by a technique of proper simplification can also be found only in two bigger works - collages as well - commenting on the indiscriminate approval of the pauperised and trashy model of American culture. It was at the beginning of her artistic way when Krystyna Matusiak created pictures which expressed anxiety about the loss of her own cultural identity and individuality.

American culture with its courage, colour and variety would seem, to some extent, to go with the image of the wonderful land of happiness. Yet in the motives clearly juxtaposed the artist exposes only the appearance of the 'wide world'. Elements which in other works are merely a manifestation of enthusiasm, which intensifies the value of beauty and glamour, here become a tool of creating apparent truth and sham 'worth one cent' - like the silver glimmering background. In the background there loom the symbols of European culture: the Eiffel Tower and the fragment of London view.

It proves that the artist consciously and precisely uses the means of expression. They constitute a carefully worked out and distinguishable code, letting the others recognise her works.

Krystyna Matusiak has managed to get her own way. She uses a characteristic set of motives which obviously originate from the real world. She bases on direct perception and very emotional reactions to up-to-date events. The elements constituting a painting come from a load of stimuli. The artist does not obviously reproduce nature - she only constructs its expression by means of unique artistic signs.

The artist analyses and simplifies some objects, transforms them so that, on the one hand, she could subordinate their shape to so close to abstraction principle of constructing a painting, and, on the other hand, juxtapose them on a surface as symbols easy to identify, expressing the essence of the world explored; like numerous synonyms of happiness and joy: suns, lanterns, crowns, lights of a circus and a funfair, or like the symbols of the life-giving power: vaginal and phallic symbols, those looking like ova or sperms, or organic forms emitting some energy. Signs referring to both sexes (e.g. solar and lunar symbols) tacitly fight with each other in the presented world, like the feminine and masculine elements which have a constant struggle within the artist's personality.

The expression of significantly simplified drawing, often limited to contour, which is autonomic and is independent of a colour patch, stimulates our imagination. In the process of changes in this creation, realistic or merely allusive forms were often linked with abstract elements. In her latest works Krystyna Matusiak has approached pure abstraction.

The artist puts the components of the presented world into a compositional reticulation made for a given painting. The shape of a composition may be more unconstrained, dynamic, or subservient to geometric principles of composition depending on the possibility of having under control the natural conflict between the element of emotions and reasonable intellect. In the latter case the reticulation most frequently looks like static arrangements of simple vertical and horizontal forms, sometimes just like a regular chess board whose squares are filled with participants of an aesthetic game - narrative motives of a painting.

In other cases lines of tension go along vertical lines (pointed out e.g. by elements disturbing tranquillity of a wild beach), along diagonal lines, or they form a complicated compositional centre marked by two diagonal lines, constituting a bent shape of a cross.

To present the world of her imagination the artist uses an original perspective. It is the perspective of childlike perception and projection of the world, the perspective where the principles of parallel view are in compliance with the principles of perpendicular view. Due to this feature landscapes - urban or seaside ones - are characterised by original topography and they often remind us of medieval maps where the squares of geometric diagram projecting the world seen 'from a bird's eye' were filled with full images of objects put 'one on the other' - presented from a totally different perspective.
In this way the world, being in constant movement, is presented in a static way. Colour is the element which makes it dynamic. These suggestive means of painting expression are perhaps Krystyna Matusiak's strongest point. In her paintings and graphic works colour has various roles. It is difficult to believe that this abundance has been achieved by means of a limited palette.
Colours are bright, fresh and intensive, with a strong power of expression, of which hot oranges seem to be the most audacious. Their choice is most of all based on their dynamic rather than figurative value. Colour is also frequently supported both in oil paintings and in graphics by expressive impact of textures. Some colourful layers are in the optical foreground, the others apparently withdraw to the background, which results in a kind of colourful perspective.

Colour composition is often based on the contrast of complementary colours which contribute to a structure of a painting and at the same time they enable to organise a work on its other levels.

In one of Krystyna Matusiak's latest paintings the arrangement of expressive colour spheres gives rhythm to the whole composition in which dark accents mark a diagonal direction of tension. The whole work appears to feel the rhythm of beats of sunrays - so difficult to perceive. It is also a kind of reflection on the influence of sunlight of the South on the quality and intensity of colours which in this painting have become whitened and dimmed. Therefore in these works colour may be both a form and a subject.

Together with light it can also define the quality of a given thing. That is why in the artist's painting palms are bright, suns and stars are surrounded by mysterious radiation, facades of houses emit soft glittering light. Dynamism of colours becomes dynamism of objects. Like in case of Joan Miró or Wassily Kandinsky - brightness of colourful patches, energy of joyful and brilliant forms make us enchanted immediately.

For a few years however, the artist has been trying to constrain the excessive excitability of her exuberant palette. She looks for more subtle colours, tends - in the range of compositions too - to be more disciplined, to achieve the state of sophistication and dimmed hues of colour.

Every now and again she creates compositions in one unexpectedly dark colour tone. In the colour attire of 'towns of dreams', and later on in 'cosmic' paintings, whose groundwork became 'travels to the land of the artist's imagination', the artist shows - at least in the second plan - interest in less expressive effects, despite strong colour dominants in the fundamental thematic and compositional motives.

Considering the artist's attitude to colour we could say that she plays with colour phrases composed like music. This reference of a critic to the sphere of music is plausible. And it appears not only when the artist herself emphasises her fascination with Strawiński and his inspiring role in the process of creating the painting cycle.
The musical aspect of Krystyna Matusiak's paintings and graphic works lies in the structure of works. It can be perceived in the rhythm of forms and the arrangement of colour relations.

A kind of music can also be heard in the atmosphere of exotic landscapes, Spanish beaches, Paris streets. We could state that using a brush and paints the artist composes sunny sonatas, or using a burin - etudes of moonlight emotions.

Krystyna Matusiak persues both lyrical allusive abstraction and expressive abstraction with some figurative elements. It happens that the artist gets away from semi-figurative vehement expression of colours and forms towards the more rational sphere of pure abstraction. She is even said (it is the critics who say that) to have flirted with Neue Wilde, being under the influence of Satan.

No matter which trend of contemporary art recognises this creation, there is no doubt about one thing: it is one of the most original expressions of the last two decades, not only in Łodź. It is an authentic work, finding harmonious compromise between the internal need for expression and the external artistic message. To penetrate this unknown world we must find a key which lies on the border between intuition which can reach the emotional world of the artist and rationalism from which abstract form of paintings derives.

Krystyna Matusiak's works are a phenomenon of imagination which, without any compromise, has been transferred into the language of drawing and colour.

Dariusz Leśnikowski