Marian Bogusz (1920 Pleszew-1980 Warsaw), Meditations, 1963

oil, canvas, 96.5 x 130 cm, signed, dated and described on the reverse: 'MARIAN BOGUSZ | 93 x 130 | oil | `ROZMYŚLANIA` | 1963 | M. Bogusz | owned by Danuta Bruk'.



From 1946 to 1948 he studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, and his professors were Jan Cybis and Jan Sokolowski. In the mid-1950s, working with Zbigniew Dłubak and Kajetan Sosnowski, he founded the Group 55. Its formation was not only an expression of rebellion against the recent domination of socialist realism in various areas of cultural life, but also an expression of opposition to the somewhat ossified, but still promoted in academies as a kind of canon, aestheticizing art completely detached from the surrounding reality. Bogusz, who played a pivotal role in the group, was also a co-founder of one of the first post-war Polish galleries to show contemporary art - the Krzywe Koło Gallery. He actively participated in the life of the avant-garde, and was the initiator of many artistic endeavors, including the Exhibitions of Modern Art in 1948-49 in Cracow and in 1957 and 1959 in Warsaw. He was a creator of sculptural and spatial compositions, a painter, a sculptor; he was interested in stage design and graphic design. In his paintings he tried to combine the expressiveness of language, the means of expression used, with the need to give them a metaphorical meaning. Both these inclinations blurred when he became interested in matter painting in the 1960s. At that time he abandoned not only metaphor, but even any allusiveness, trying to expose the autonomous values of the artwork, especially the texture of the painting. He revealed, even more strongly than in his earlier works, his sensitivity to color, his ability to extract numerous shades and nuances from the color patch. Some of the works of this type have a relief structure, characteristic of this poetics, which made it possible to achieve additional effects close to informel.