Witold Leszek Kaczanowski (Witold-K) (1932), WITHOUT TITLE, 1974.

acrylic/canvas, 126.7 x 152 cm
signed p.d.: [ under the line ] Witold - K. 1974

The artist gained international fame with his unique paintings, distinguished by his individual vision (Kaczanowski had a retrospective exhibition at Sotheby's auction house in Amsterdam in 2007). On the one hand, always oriented in the mainstream of art, he stayed out of it, so to speak, creating original paintings. Since 1960, his work has been dominated by multifigural compositions with depictions of human figures with characteristic simplified silhouettes, sometimes reduced to a barrel-shaped torso and faceless head. However, the schematically depicted figures are not devoid of human characteristics. They are people united by a common fate. Viewed by us usually from the back, from above, they walk ahead - sometimes toward an entrance or gate yawning with darkness, and sometimes away into the indefinite distance. In the 1950s Kaczanowski created purely abstract compositions, and he did not abandon abstraction in later decades either. This type of painting compositions are eminently decorative. The forms filling the picture plane seem to be spatial, as if they were designs of objects. This impression is not accidental. In 1958 Kaczanowski created designs for suspended sculptures - these are organic abstract forms reminiscent of Henry Moore's sculptures. From 1975, on the other hand, come designs for abstract sculptural forms designed to be hung on the wall and others created to be suspended from the ceiling. The featured composition shows just such a decorative form. Interestingly, in the 1973 painting, a lone figure stares at a composition composed of small elements suspended as if in a dark cloud. This scene is a representation of the relationship between the work and the viewer. It reveals that art is an undefinable phenomenon, and that an encounter with a work of art is sometimes an indescribable experience. As the artist himself said in 1978: " I start painting when words lose their meaning " (Witold-K at Sotheby's, Warsaw-Amsterdam 2007, p. 97).