Adam Marczynski, COMPOSITION 21, 1963

90.0 x 68.0 cm - freehand technique (veneer, tracing paper, tissue paper), plate signed by lead on the loom's g. strip: MARCZYŃSKI ADAM, "KOMPOZYCJA 21" 1963
on lower strip: MARCZYŃSKI Adam KOMPOZYCJA [signature crossed out] /.
on the l. strip: up arrow mark

Around 1960, the structure of the painting, based on clear vertical and horizontal divisions, definitely comes to the forefront of Marczyński's work. The fields thus delineated are filled with Concretes - "found", "discarded" objects. The effort to paint the texture is replaced by the use of concrete material. Paper facings imitating wood in various stages of deterioration, sheet metal or tar paper, plaster, marble have been pasted on the dicta. Some of them give the impression of having been cut from previously realized color monotypes. They were inscribed in strictly defined geometric figures, most often rectangles and trapezoids. The paper, sometimes pasted on cardboard, has been specially damaged, tattered, scratched (...). In some strange and perverse way, this mutilated, suffering matter began to affect through its decorativeness and rhythmicity, and became beautiful through color finesse. It is also slowly entering the areas of time symbolism, prompting "nostalgic reflections ... on the passing of beauty and the beauty of transience."

Katarzyna Podniesinska, Between Metaphor and Concrete. Works from 1954-1963, exhibition catalog, National Museum in Cracow, X-XII 2008, Cracow 2008

♣ to the price auctioned, in addition to other costs, a fee will be added resulting from the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)

Adam Marczyński (Krakow 1908 - Krakow 1985) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow from 1930 to 1936 under Prof. Władysław Jarocki and Stanisław Pieńkowski. He received his diploma in 1936. During his studies, he traveled to France and Spain (1930), and after graduation - to France (1936). In 1933-1934, he was associated with the "Cracow Group" (the so-called "First Group"), with which he exhibited twice. He also made stage designs for the "Cricot" theater. He spent the first years of World War II in Lviv. He returned to Cracow in 1941. After the war, he took up teaching work at the Academy of Fine Arts (from 1945, professor 1951, dean of the Faculty of Painting 1970-1972, retired in 1979). At the same time, he reunited with the circle of artists gathered around Tadeusz Kantor and Maria Jarema, who in 1957 established the so-called second "Krakow Group." Marczynski remained a member of it and exhibited with it until the end of his life. He was involved in painting, drawing, stage design, printmaking and book illustration. He also made polychromes in churches. In the 1950s, he created cubic painting compositions with bright colors, suggesting neither landscapes nor views of underwater worlds, characterized by a poetic, surreal mood, reminiscent of the art of Paul Klee and Joan Miró. His drawings of the time, drawn with a delicate line, harmonized with the expression of his paintings. From around 1960 he made a series of objects entitled Concretes, referring to the painting of matter, in which he used as material sheets of wooden plywood or veneer, tar paper, less often sheet metal, additionally subjected to various treatments, such as burning, destroying the surface, etc. Since the mid-1960s, he created objects with variable elements - built from freely juxtaposed "boxes" with tilting lids. Different configurations of their inclination caused variable rhythms of the whole composition. The artist exhibited a lot, including. At the Olympic Exhibition, London 1948 (honorable mention and diploma), the Venice Biennale of Art in 1956, the Second and Third Exhibition of Modern Art, Warsaw 1957 and 1959, the Second International Biennale of Graphics, Ljubljana 1957 (honorable mention), the Sao Paulo Biennale of Art 1959 and Documenta in Kassel 1959, the "Golden Grape" Symposia, Zielona Gora 1963 and 1965, the First Biennale of Spatial Forms, Elblag 1965.