Wojciech Fangor, Sketch for an Image, 1969

36.0 x 51.0 cm - oil crayon, paper signed p.d.: Fangor 69
on the reverse p.g.: Fangor 74 62 [in a circle].


Sticker of CBWA Zachęta with details of the painting and number 62 affixed below the work on the backing.

The drawing shows the type of compositions whose wide representation is included in the album: Fangor. Works on Paper in Color, concept and arrangement by Wojciech Fangor, published by the Foundation for Polish Modern Art, Warsaw 2007 (publication accompanying the exhibition of the same title at aTAK Gallery, Warsaw 31 May - 31 July 2007). The names of the types come from the artist.

Sketch for a painting, 1969 belongs to the Wave type - cf. ibid, nos. 78-80, 111-137, 146-176 - and is associated with "optical" paintings composed of vertical or diagonal stripes.


The stickers of the Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions were most likely placed on the binding of the work in connection with the exhibition: Fangor. 50 Years of Painting, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw Oct. 1-28, 1990 - the first Fangor retrospective in Poland after 1989. Shortly after 1989, the Zachęta Gallery still used CBWA stickers. This work does not appear in the catalog listing, perhaps it was not exhibited.



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



Wojciech Fangor (Warsaw 1922 - Warsaw 2015) studied painting with Tadeusz Pruszkowski and Felicjan Szczęsny-Kowarski (1940-44). In 1946 he received his diploma at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1954-62 he was a docent in the Graphic Arts Department of the academy. He participated in the official artistic life of the Socialist Realist period as a painter and graphic-poster artist. In painting, he sometimes used exaggerations on the verge of intentional caricature ("Characters," 1950). In film posters, he operated with metaphor and synthetic painterly signs in a way that departed from the doctrine of Socialist Realism ("Stronger Than Night," 1955), becoming a co-founder of the so-called Polish school of posters. He also collaborated with architects, including Stanisław Zamecznik, with whom he created "Study of Space" in 1958, the first Polish environment, which was based on his optical paintings. In 1961, he left Poland, first to Vienna, then to Washington (1962), Paris (1962-1964), West Berlin (1964-1965) and England (1965-1966). In 1966 he settled permanently in the United States, where he taught at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison (1966-1983) and the Department of Architecture at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachussets (1967-1968). In 1978 he received a Jurzykowski Foundation award. In 1989 he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has lived in Poland since the 1990s.

He died in Warsaw on October 25, 2015.