Wojciech Fangor (1922 - 2015), Red Moons 2, 1961

oil, canvas; 180 x 65 cm;
signed, dated and described on the reverse: "FANGOR 1961 RED MOONS 2"

Provenance:
- purchase from the artist
- Collection of Tom Slick, United States
- Heather James Fine Art Gallery, New York, USA
- private collection, Poland

Exhibited:
- "Tom Slick. International Art Collector," McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas, United States, June 10, 2009 - September 13, 2009.
- "Wojciech Fangor: The Early 1960s.", Heather James Fine Art, New York, New York, USA, 19 IV 2018 - 30 VI 2018.
- "Wojciech Fangor: The Early 1960s.", Heather James Fine Art, San Francisco, USA, 11 Oct 2018 - 31 Dec 2018.

Reproduced painting:
"Tom Slick. International Art Collector," McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas, USA, 2009, p. 33 (color ill.).

Bibliography:
Szydłowski S., "Wojciech Fangor. 3 Dimensions. A Retrospective. 3 Dimensions a Retrospective," Orońsko Polish Sculpture Center, Orońsko 2015.

The painting has an opinion by Anna Derentowicz Zakrzewska, 2021.

Wojciech Fangor's name is mentioned among the leading representatives of world op-art. Experimental projects involving space, color and the viewer set the artist on an innovative path in contemporary conceptual art. Fangor's observation of the interrelationship between the categories of space and time in a work of painting was linked to the experience of the architectural projects in which he participated. However, he began with representational painting in the Socialist Realist trend. Fangor was also one of the co-founders of the famous Polish School of Posters. In the early 1950s, he began working with architects: Stanislaw Zamecznik, Oskar Hansen, Zbigniew Ichnatowicz and Jerzy Soltan. It was Stanislaw Zamecznik who instilled in Fangor an awareness of space as artistic material. In 1958 they jointly prepared a significant exhibition "Study of Space" in the Salon of "New Culture" in Warsaw. During it, the artist presented twenty optical works, characterized by dispersed forms and blurred contours. As a result, they evoked the illusion of space, later called "positive illusory space" by the artist. The vast majority of the canvases were set up on easels. This exhibition was not about individual paintings, but about the relationships between them. By choosing a path between the paintings, the viewer became a co-author of the work, which was not a closed structure, but an open system. "Study of Space" was an innovative work, later called classical environment. In addition to "Study of Space," Fangor and Zamecznik made two other exhibitions devoted to space: in 1959 at the Stedelijk Museum and the same year in front of the "Zachęta" building in Warsaw. In 1962 the artist was awarded a fellowship from the Institute for Contemporary Art in Washington, DC, where his solo exhibition also took place.
The offered oil canvas of representative format can be counted among the significant works of the painter from the early 1960s. The painting was created in Austria as a result of the artist's intensive research during this period on the effect of dispersion and the role of color in the work. It is worth noting that there was also a painting called "Red Moons I", which was destroyed in a fire in Dallas in 1975. Thirty-five years later, Fangor made replicas of both works, also giving them double dating. The signed composition with red moons is a kind of prelude to a series of works with circles and waves with blurred edges, perfectly conveying the illusion of movement, which dominated the artist's work until the mid-1970s. Fangor's painting experiments remain among the most sought-after by collectors of postwar art.