Stefan Gierowski, IMAGE DCCLVIII, 2000

120,0 x 120,0cm - oil, canvas signed p.d.: s gierowski | Ob DCCLVIII



Matter, light, movement, space, their qualities, mutual relationships and interdependencies - these are the problems that Gierowski has been dealing with almost from the beginning, wrote Mariusz Hermansdorfer in the catalog of the exhibition Emotion and Order at the National Museum in Wroclaw. Describing what transformations took place in the artist's work, Hermansdorfer states that initially it was dominated by the problems of matter, while in the following years light became the main element of the paintings, as a consequence of which another painting problem appeared - space. The spontaneous formation of the composition then led to a deeper reflection on the construction of the canvas and its structure. The artist then introduced straight and parabolic lines. At the next stage of creative struggle, Stefan Gierowski organized the composition of the canvas exclusively by color gradations. He contrasted large planes of different tones, approaching solutions from the circle of geometric art. Hermansdorfer emphasized: This is suggested by the relatively clear color divisions, suggests a kind of composition based on surrounding a neutral background with a color-differentiated border, also suggests afterimage effects. However, he points out that when analyzing Gierowski's works, one should first of all look for the understated, emotional in them, and only then find the structural elements, the auxiliary elements. Then Gierowski's art will present its true values, and his paintings will turn out to be excellent studies of painterly spaces, but also a very subjective record of sensations experienced by man in contact with nature and its laws. (Mariusz Hermansdorfer, Emotion and Order, National Museum in Wroclaw, Wroclaw 2004, pp. 34-40)





♣ a fee will be added to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, based on 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).

Stefan Gierowski (Częstochowa 1925 - Konstancin Jeziorna 2022) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (with Jerzy Fedkowicz and Zbigniew Pronaszko, among others) and art history at the Jagiellonian University. In 1949 he moved to Warsaw. In 1955 he took part in an exhibition at the Arsenal. During this period he practiced figurative painting with existentialist accents. In 1957, he created the first painting marked with the number I - since then the artist does not use literary titles, calling his works "Paintings" and numbering them with Roman numerals. The artist became associated with the Krzywe Koło Gallery in Warsaw, where he had solo exhibitions in 1957 and 1959. His paintings break out of the definitions of both informel-type abstraction and post-constructivist art, although they bear features of both. They are characterized, especially in the early period, by a sophisticated play of texture and colors, which allows us to see in Gierowski a continuator of the school of Polish colorism. In the 1960s, in paintings of decisive composition, he exposed valor effects. Since the 1970s, he focused more attention on the interplay of color fields, either contrasted or broken into patches of pure pigment. This theme in the 1980s gained a significant addition. The artist undertook a search for forms and compositional arrangements that could become the visual equivalent of verbal concepts (the 1986 series "Painting the Ten Commandments"). From 1961 to 1995 Gierowski was a teacher at the Warsaw Academy, from 1976 - a professor, from 1975 to 1981 - dean of the Faculty of Painting. He led a studio distinguished by its program and intellectual level, from which many outstanding painters emerged. In 1983, he was elected rector by the Academy Senate, but the choice was not approved by the authorities. The artist's attitude towards martial law - in which he was also a model for his students - contributed to this.