In December, £ód¼'s cultural life will be dominated by visual art exhibitions.

The Atlas Sztuki Gallery is showing works by German artist Ludwig Wilding until Dec. 8. The exhibition, entitled Space-Movement-Time, is intended to acquaint Polish audiences with Wilding's art, which is virtually unknown in Poland. The exhibition features pieces made in 1966-2005.

This 80-year-old artist studied art history and philosophy at Mainz University and was a student of Willi Baumeister, a leading German abstractionist after World War II. Wilding is a professor at Hochschule für Bildende Künste, an academy of fine arts in Hamburg. For more than 50 years, his works have been shown at numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Japan, Australia and the United States. In 1965, he took part in the first large international op-art exhibition, The Responsive Eye, at New York's Museum of Modern Art. He also had a solo exhibition at the Denise René Gallery in Paris that same year.

In 2007, Wilding took part in two major op-art exhibitions-a large retrospective at the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio, and an exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle gallery in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Moreover, the Museum für Konkrete Kunst (Museum of Concrete Art) in Ingolstadt, Germany, showed a large retrospective of his work entitled Visuelle Phänomene (Visual Phenomena).

In his art, Wilding is inspired by what are called stereoscopic effects resulting from the fact that people look at the world with two eyes, each eye seeing a slightly different image. Due to this "double vision," people often experience optical illusions. Wilding does not want the term op-art to be used in reference to his work. He says his art is not only about the sense of sight but also about spirit.

Another interesting development in visual arts in £ód¼ this December will be the Dec. 13 opening of J'ai perdu la fin!, an exhibition mounted by the local Museum of Art in association with the Abteiberg Museum in Münchengladbach, Germany. The exhibition will show artistic trends that determined the profiles of the two museums: the tradition of constructivist avant-garde in the case of the £ód¼ museum and the minimalism and conceptualism of the 1960s and '70s in the case of the Münchengladbach facility.

The exhibition will mostly feature works by artists such as Edward Krasiński and Marcel Broodthaers as well as Cezary Bodzianowski, Oskar Dawicki, Igor Krenz, Józef Robakowski and Jens Ullrich.

An exhibition of paintings submitted to the 1st Quadro-Art 2007 International Painting Biennial-an event held by the £ód¼ chapter of the Association of Polish Visual Artists (ZPAP)-will open at the local History Museum Dec. 28. The exhibition will showcase some 140 paintings in various media.

The Shalom Ash Festival will be held for the fifth time in the city of Kutno near £ód¼ Dec. 5-9 to honor the outstanding Jewish writer born in that city. His first publication was a collection of stories on biblical topics written in Polish. Then he started writing in Yiddish, but his contacts with the Polish literary world remained close. He left Poland in 1910, but forever remained emotionally bound with the country. He published dozens of novels, stories and plays, in which he highlighted the common heritage of Judaism and Christianity. He appealed for reconciliation between the two religions, braving harsh criticism from Jewish readers toward the end of his life. He died in London in 1957. The 8th Shalom Ash National Literary Competition will conclude during this year's festival.

Maria Sondej