"Human works can be analyzed from various point of view and those taht appear new in one aspect are not new in another one. Every spring, new leaves grow on a tree that is not new and the process itself is not new either. It is very much the same with all products of man. Whatever man does is in some way similar to something that has been before and in some way diffrent"

Wł. Tatarkiewicz
"History of Six Notions"

(...) In the case of this artist, what is particulary intriguing is the "contemplative description of figures", both human and those related to landscape. Even though Birkenmajer's painting is not overtly religious, it alludes in an obvious way to the Main Creator, the Artist, the Geometer and the Architect of the World. Thus Birkenmajer alludes to the exegetes and theologians of the Church, in order to provide a better understanding of the "Book of Genesis". Through the understanding of these landscapes which the Architect of the World "created ex ni-hilo", one may come to discover God.

The transposed rocky cliffs of Spitsbergen rise up in the mists like the Thrones of God, from which the evil spirits have been driven away, and the landscapes have become clean, even sterile. The whole is inundated in absolute silence and ideal unity. These landscapes are full of depth, multi-planed, saturated with daylight but never illuminated by sunshine. They are always accompanied by Italian sfumato with the atmosphere of white nights. Full of harmony, colors, and shapes, they wait to receive human souls.

And people appear in Birkenmajer's art like angels. Angels are divine souls, completely pure. They move in the cosmic dries, in a space full of star dust and golden gravel meteorites, always in an atmosphere of melancholy happiness. In Iwo's work, Man is treated as a microcosm, but he knows the macrocosm by knowing himself.

The attitude of person to space in Iwo's portraits is a relation to the cosmic space, or the space of "Paradise Lost". These may be purgatorial spaces, spaces of promise, expulsion and melancholy, in contrast to the landscapes, where the scenery symbolizes a sacred sphere, within which the Sacrum pulsates.

Three components appear in the portraits: enigmatic space, the extraterrestrial space in which the subjects live, and the corporeal and spiritual matter. The portrait of Mother against a golden background brings to mind a Byzantine icon, purified in the fire of gold. From the portrait there radiates the memory of a happy childhood, enveloped in the maternal love of this intellectually uncommon woman. The floral robe completes the atmosphere of heavenly gardens. In this portrait the artist has not shown such an important motif as the Mother's hands. He has omitted this element, in order to emphasize strongly the solidness and the warmth of the Mother's body.

In his drawings he alludes to Albrecht Durer. The figure of the famous Melancholy (1514) has clearly affected the artist's imagination and it is reflected in the composition of his daughter's portrait.

In his artistic sensitivity, as thought in a lens Birkenmajer focuses on the richness of artistic influences, from the Middle Ages, to the creative, decadent eclecticism of the 19th and 20th centuries"...

"Iwo Birkenmajer at the Turn of the Century"
Jerzy Leopold Feiner
Los Angeles, 1998