Author: Błażej Musiał (Grifeen)
Title: “Warsaw”
Technique: watercolor on paper
Size: 61 x 46 cm; size with mat: 70 x 55 cm
Warsaw in Full Color – A Unique Watercolor by Błażej Musiał “Grifeen”
Watercolor on paper | over a month of artistic work
Dimensions inside the mat: 48 × 63 cm
Dimensions with frame: 70 × 90 cm
Warsaw as it has never been depicted in Błażej Musiał’s work. Intense, full of light, color, and fantasy—a city almost pulsing with energy. This time, the artist, working under the pseudonym Grifeen, moves away from more subdued tones and offers an exceptionally striking, color-saturated interpretation of the capital.
It’s a true explosion of color captured in an exceptionally precise watercolor. Deep cobalt and blue hues meet here with oranges, reds, and sunny yellows. Color, however, is not a random addition—it builds space, guides the eye, and gives the entire composition an extraordinary rhythm.
Grifeen’s Warsaw is not a photographic representation of the city. It is the artist’s own vision of the capital, in which real-world inspirations intertwine with the artist’s imagination. Tenement houses stack one on top of another, roofs overlap, narrow streets disappear between the buildings, and characteristic elements of Warsaw’s architecture rise above them. All of this creates a fantastical city—familiar, yet existing solely on paper.
The upper part of the composition is particularly striking. Geometric planes of intense blue, navy, yellow, and orange form a sky reminiscent of stained glass, which lends the entire work a modern character and further emphasizes its unique color palette.
It is a painting that can be viewed time and again, revealing something new each time: small windows, dormers, chimneys, awnings, fragments of roofs, laundry hanging between tenement buildings, and other architectural details. The vast number of minute elements demonstrates the scale of the work that went into creating this watercolor.
The artist worked on the piece for over a month. First, he created an extremely detailed pen-and-ink drawing, and then the composition was gradually built up with successive layers of transparent watercolor. Given such a large format and such a wealth of detail, this is a process that requires exceptional patience, precision, and technical mastery.
Błażej Musiał “Grifeen”
Błażej Musiał (b. 1985), who creates under the pseudonym Grifeen, is a Polish painter and graphic artist, a graduate of landscape architecture at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn. His education in space, perspective, and composition is clearly evident in his work.
The artist’s signature style consists of original city panoramas, created using traditional techniques—from precise pen-and-ink drawings to the manual application of successive layers of watercolor. Grifeen combines architectural precision with an almost fairy-tale-like freedom in constructing space, thanks to which his cities exist on the border between reality and fantasy.
The presented “Warsaw” is a particularly striking example of this body of work. Here, the artist opted for an exceptionally bold, intense color palette, creating a highly decorative piece, full of energy and instantly eye-catching.
The large format of 48 × 63 cm (inside the mat) and the striking frame measuring 70 × 90 cm give this work a very strong presence in any interior.
This piece is ideal for lovers of Warsaw, contemporary watercolor, and collectors seeking distinctive and instantly recognizable works. A rare opportunity to acquire such a large, incredibly labor-intensive, and exceptionally colorful piece by Grifeen—a Warsaw full of light, fantasy, and unique urban energy.
