This Belgian artist, who had become famous for his avant-garde comics over thirty years ago, earned himself a lasting place in modern art history and in pop-culture - mostly with his three great painting albums: ”The Rock Dreams”, “The Big Room” and “The Twentieth Century Dreams”. The exhibition at ATLAS SZTUKI has been made of pictures from the last of these albums. These astonishing pictures, though almost realistic to a fault, together made up a very personal chronicle of the last century, of its spirit and distinctness. Through them, ATLAS SZTUKI has become a scene of meeting of the great celebrities, almost icons of those times – stars of the stage, screen and sport, together with scientists, writers and politicians. Peellaert boldly matched e.g. Marlene Dietrich and Jacqueline Kennedy with Marcel Proust, Günter Grass or Lenin, or many other persons. Why such celebrities? The artist explains: The prime idea was to tell the story of human being, who took part in all significant events of XX century, being their privileged witness or actor.

The introduction into Twentieth Century dreams. From the right (facing the public), Guy Peellaert; in the background, Elizabeth Peellaert, his wife and an outstanding translator of modern American, literature into French. At the microphone, jacek Michalak, the president of ATLAS SZTUKI.

Thanks to it we have an opportunity to plunge into world of fascinating dreams of the former century we have derived from. And those dreams – as all dreams – exaggerate reality to a fault, emphasising power of human emotions. The Guy Pellaert exhibition is a kind of “emotional history of XX century”. In Łódź, the possibility of travelling through the former, but still vivid century is open for you from may 13 to June 12. At the opening day it was enriched by two films about artistioc creativity of Peellaert. The first was made by Claude Ventura in 2004, for German-French ARTE Televisionm, and the second – by Philipp Cornell in 2002, for Canal Plus.

Guy Peellaert also designed album covers for the Rolling Stones and David Bowie and movie posters for films of such directors as Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders. He was a set designer for film and theatre and he took part in many other artistic projects. His art is well known in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Milan and Munich. Now it is turn of Łódź. The exhibition at ATLAS SZTUKI is the first so large presentation of Peellaert’s paintings in Poland.