Jan Tarasin (1926-2009), PREVIOUSLY POLLED,1977

oil/canvas, 51 x 66 cm
signed p.d.: JTarasin 77
described on the back: JAN TARASIN 77/"PRZEDMIOTY POLICZONE"

ORIGIN:
- private collection
"Tarasin's painting - as the artist sometimes described it - is meant to record the constant process of evolution, the rhythm of nature. But at the same time it is an open book, the beauty of whose recording is equal to the weight of multiple and mentally weighty, though not always easy to read messages. For Jan Tarasin was, like most great artists, not only an artist, but a thinker. He claimed that painting is not a goal, but a path. The goal is to answer the question: what is the world?" Bożena Kowalska ([ in:] Sztuka.pl, Great absentees, Jan Tarasin (1926-2009), October 2009, no. 10, p. 18 ).
The featured painting comes from the 1970s, when Jan Tarasin's unique way of painting crystallized. As Bożena Kowalska wrote: "His paintings became pages of enigmatic records. Always running in horizontal lines, incomprehensible, so mysterious signs of his "writing" are sometimes interchangeable: large and small, loosely distributed or in a disruptive symmetry , chaotic density. Sometimes, though rarely, they are situated on a plane, more often suspended in an illusory space. Sometimes they are monochromatic, with only a splash of sophistication of subtle pinks, ochres and blues. At other times with sparingly or even sparsely dosed colors. But there are also paintings intense in color, based on sophisticated and masterfully played out contrasts. The signs, varying in size, which the artist used, are as varied in shape as in color: from the pure geometry of rectangles, triangles, circles or hieroglyphs, to the shapeless spots like randomly spilled blobs. They fill the planes of both oil-painted canvases and black ink drawings on paper in varying density. These constantly occurring changes in the size and density of marks and blobs in his works suggest spatial depths and constant movement within them. And the meaning is not purely formal." (Ibidem,p.14-15)