Dimensions: 17.5 x 23.7 cm
Exhibited
Exhibition ZZPAP, IPS in Park Sienkiewicza, Lodz 17.12.1933-21.01.1934
Ksawery Dunikowski, Henryk Gotlieb, Karol Hiller, Władysław Jarocki, IPS, Warsaw 5-25.01.1938
Exhibition of Karol Hiller and Kazimierz Libin, IPS in Sienkiewicz Park, Lodz, 8-30.05.1938
Collages and Reliefs 1910-1945 and Hiller - Heliographs, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 30.06-2.10.1982
Présences Polonaises. L'art vivant autour du Musée de Lodz, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 23.06-26.09.1983
Constructivism in Poland 1923 to 1936, Kettle's Yard Gallery, Cambridge 24.02-25.03.1984, Riverside Studios, London, 17.04-20.05.1984, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 4.08-30.09.1984
Polish photography 1912-1948 from the collection of the Museum of Art in Lodz, National Museum, Poznan, 15.09-19.11.1995
a.r. artistes révolutionnaires de Lodz, Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels, 17.10.2001-6.01.2002
Dormant Capital, Wilanów Museum Palace, Profile Foundation, Warsaw 2010
Karol Hiller, Heliographics 1932-1939, Olszewski Gallery, Warsaw, 08.12.2018-15.02.2019
Literature
Karol Hiller: Heliografiki, Olszewski Gallery, Warsaw 2019, p. 40.
Dormant Capital, exhibition catalog, Wilanów Museum Palace, Profile Foundation, 2010, cat. 81
Matter (in) photography, exhibition catalog, State Art Gallery, Sopot 2008, cat. 4
Karol Hiller 1891-1939: New Vision, exhibition catalog, Museum of Art in Lodz, Lodz 2002, cat. III, p. 131 (il.).
Z. Karnicka, Karol Hiller et les mysteres de la matiere, [in:] Vision machine. Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, 13 mai-10 septembre 2000, Somogy editions d'art, Paris 2000, p. 116
A. Nakov, Hiller Heliographs, [in:] Collages and Reliefs 1910-1945 and Hiller Heliographs, Annaly Juda Fine Art, London 1982, p. 94
N. Samotyhova, Four Artists at the Institute of Art Propaganda, 1939, p. 9.
"Forma," no. 2, September 1934, p. 23 (il.)
Biography
From 1903-1910 he attended the Handicraft and Industrial School in Lodz. Between 1910 and 1912 he studied chemistry at the Technical College in Darmstadt. He continued his studies from 1912-1916 at the Faculty of Engineering and Construction of the Polytechnic Institute in Warsaw. In 1916, he was drafted into the army and ended up in Kiev, where he began his artistic studies at the Academy of Fine Arts under Mikhail Boychuk, a Byzantine painter. He later used his research into ancient painting techniques to apply icon tempera to his works. He lived through the years of the October Revolution in Kiev, becoming politically involved. In 1921 he returned permanently to Lodz, where he began active artistic, pedagogical, journalistic and social activities. He was a co-founder of the Association of Visual Artists (1931), a member of the Start grouping and the Professional Union of Polish Visual Artists (from 1933). In 1928 Hiller took part in the Modernists' Salon in Warsaw; in 1930-1937 he participated in exhibitions of the Institute of Art Propaganda in Lodz and Warsaw. In 1932 he presented his works with the New Generation group in Lviv and Lodz, and in 1933 with the Group of Modern Artists in Lodz. Educated at the Kiev Academy of Fine Arts, he explored traditional painting and icon art and came into contact with the Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde. Fascinated by the cubist beauty of Lodz's factories, he built a modern, expressive myth of the working city. Among other things, he created a series of monumental linocuts depicting the people and architecture of the industrial city. In the late 1920s, he turned to abstract art, painting paintings pulsating with life, with varied textures, colors, and a wealth of geometric, biological, or cosmological forms. He then experimented with a new graphic technique - heliography. In the 1930s, he moved away from constructivist, flat geometricism, creating biomorphic, abstract compositions sometimes close to the poetics of surrealism; they were filled with fluid, motion-captured organic forms ("Composition 205 A," 1932, "Embryo," 1933). Influenced by his fascination with Bergson's philosophy, Hiller saturated the world of his imagery with an "irrational element" (Ray, 1933; "Rain," 1934). In his figurative paintings of the late 1930s, the artist gave shapes the conciseness of a sign ("Workers," 1938). Some of his late paintings acquired a symbolic-metaphorical dimension. Hiller was also the author of wall paintings and stained glass; he made ex-librises, linocuts, lithographs, posters and photomontages. He illustrated many books, including composing the cover of Ary Szternfeld's book Initiation a la Cosmonautique. He designed scenery for theatrical performances and covers for the publishing house "Renaissance" and L. Fiszer in Lodz. Despite the short period of his creative activity, he was undoubtedly one of the most talented and interesting artists of the interwar period. An artist with an extraordinary imagination, a superbly mastered technique and a visual vision conscious of his time. He openly spoke out against Hitlerism, for which he was executed in 1939.
