Mieczyslaw Tadeusz JANIKOWSKI (1912 - 1968), Composition

oil, canvas; 47 x 62 cm;
On the reverse of the stamp: M.T. Janikowski.

Mieczyslaw Janikowski graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow on the verge of the outbreak of World War II. There he studied under Kazimierz Sichulski and Stefan Filipkiewicz - artists associated with the Young Poland movement focusing their attention on documenting the beauty of not only the native landscape, but also folk culture. He was wounded while fighting in the September campaign and evacuated to Great Britain. During his convalescence, he became acquainted with the work of Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard After the war, the artist began his studies at the College of Art in Edinburgh, where he received a scholarship enabling him to go to Paris, where he settled permanently in 1947, initially sharing a studio with Stanislaw Grabowski in the famous building - the rotunda "Le Ruche".
The painter was also friends with Jozef Czapski - a member of the Paris Committee, who, together with Piotr Potworowski, Zygmunt Waliszewski, Jan Cybis, among others, went to Paris in 1924, where a branch of the Cracow art school was eventually established. The variety of artistic circles Mieczyslaw Janikowski could get acquainted with during his stay in Paris was a wide range, ranging from Polish tendencies realized on French soil, such as the Kapist compositions of Jan Cybis, through the expressive color painting of Józef Czapski, contact with the art of the Fauvists using intense contrasting colors, whose representative was Henri Matisse, the works of artists using elements of action painting - Tashism, or the works of Victor Vassarely considered a precursor of op-art.
It can be considered that Mieczyslaw Janikowski's work was based on an interesting common point, which was the color scheme, understood, however, quite differently from all the previously mentioned tendencies. His non-figurative paintings, balancing on the edge of geometric abstraction, are united by the chromaticity of the colors used. For the artist, who claimed that: "A straight line opposed to a curve is already a drama, so why paint more?".