oil pastel / paper
37 x 55 cm
signed and dated l.d: JTarasin 95
"I paint a bit like praying a rosary, in which the beads are repeated, but they are different at the same time. This is describing the diversity of the world, but in addition to recording facts, it is important in it to look for the mechanisms that govern this diversity " - Jan Tarasin
Jan Tarasin - outstanding painter, printmaker and draughtsman, as well as art theoretician and educator. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Zbigniew Pronaszko and Wacław Taranczewski, among others. While still a student, he made his debut at the famous First Exhibition of Modern Art in Cracow (1948). He taught at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts for many years and held the position of its rector from 1987 to 1990. In 1984 he was awarded the prestigious Jan Cybis Prize.
During the First Exhibition of Modern Art, Tarasin presented geometrizing abstractions similar to the explorations of Andrzej Wróblewski at the time, but a decade later his formal experiments led him to develop his own unique style. His works - seemingly non-representational - usually contain references to the real world in their titles (Objects, Situations, etc.). For Tarasin was a keen observer of visible, material reality, but he did not see the role of painting as imitating nature, but rather as an insightful study of its mechanisms and structures. Thus, he simplified actual objects to the level of abstract signs arrayed in rhythmic, harmonious systems. It is not uncommon for them to be arranged in strip systems, reminiscent of musical notation on a stave. Another association is with Far Eastern calligraphy, which Tarasin encountered in the 1960s while on scholarship in China and Vietnam. Undoubtedly, the characteristic signs in his paintings form a kind of symbolic alphabet, read at the level of visual structures.