Jan Tarasin, SEVEN WOMEN, 1987

50.0 x 40.0 cm - pastel, paper signed (faintly visible) in pencil l.d.: Jan Tarasin 86

signed (faintly visible) on the reverse p.d.: Jan Tarasin | Six Threads 87

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

Jan Tarasin (Kalisz, September 11, 1926 - Warsaw, August 8, 2009) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Prof. Zbigniew Pronaszko (1946-1951). While still a student, he debuted at the First Exhibition of Modern Art in Krakow in 1948/49. In the mid-1950s, he created a series of lithographs: "Nowa Huta and its inhabitants", 1954, "Home", 1955). In the former he opposed official optimism, in the latter, operating with still-life symbolism, he included existential content and referring to the recent drama of war. After 1956, he began to paint non-figurative paintings. Arrangements of isolated elements (referred to as "objects") were placed by the artist on a plane (series "Interior", 1957) ), or in an allusive space (series "Feast", 1957, "Shore", 1962-1964, "Counted Objects", from 1968, "Antiquarian", 1968). This principle persists in his painting in the following years, the differences between the periods of his work are in the way of elaboration of "objects" and their location in the space of the painting or in relation to the background. Since the 1970s, "objects" are transformed into graphic, usually black marks on light backgrounds (series "Collection," since 1971). The backgrounds, in turn, are sometimes illusively spatial, varied in value, soft. In the 1990s, the artist returned to a colorful, more painterly solution of both signs and backgrounds, often dark or intermingled with "objects" (series "Hatchery of Objects", 1992). Tarasin has been a member of the "Cracow Group" since 1962. In 1963-67 he taught at the Faculty of Interior Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In 1967 he moved to Warsaw, in 1974 he took up teaching at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1987-90 he was the rector of this university. In 1976 he received the Cyprian Kamil Norwid Art Criticism Award, in 1984 the Jan Cybis Award; Award at the MB of Art in San Marino 1965. In parallel with painting, he is involved in drawing and printmaking - lithography until the 1960s, serigraphy since 1974. In 1974-1981 he published 8 author's "Notebooks" with serigraphs and his own texts. In 1995, an exhibition of the artist was held at the Zachęta Gallery, accompanied by a monographic catalog.