Andrzej Gieraga (b. 1934), Painting CCXLVI, 1994

Provenance
Łódź, private collection. Owned by the artist.

Andrzej Gieraga’s “Painting CCXLVI” was created in 1994 and is part of the geometric abstraction movement, to which the artist has remained faithful for decades. Gieraga is sometimes called a master of form and light; he creates compositions full of simplicity and harmony, distinguished by their flawless execution.
The works from the 1990s are characterized by an almost complete absence of bright or saturated colors. This did not change until the last two decades of the artist’s career. Gieraga himself referred to his paintings as “progressions,” as noted by Bogusław Deptuła, curator of the 2022 exhibition “In Search of Order”; this term not only described the artist’s practice to date but also foreshadowed the shift toward color that he would make in his later works.
“Painting CCXLVI” is a monochromatic composition. A slanted black rectangle forms the background, in the center of which appears a slightly lighter, sharp triangle pointing upward. Despite the extreme simplicity of these forms, the composition possesses a distinct dynamism, and the diagonal arrangement of the forms gives the whole a sense of apparent movement. It is significant here that the triangle is slightly raised above the surface of the painting. As a result, the painting changes depending on the time of day and the angle of light; the shadow sometimes emphasizes the triangle’s edge and at other times almost obscures it. This seemingly minimalist composition thus gains an additional layer of complexity and a kind of life of its own.