Ryszard WINIARSKI (1936 - 2006), Coincidence in a game for three, 1999

Thanks to the determination and innovation of his artistic activities, Ryszard Winiarski is today described as one of the most distinctive artists of the second half of the 20th century in Poland. His innovativeness is appreciated by art collectors. Over the past 20 years, there has been a significant increase in the price of the artist's works, which is caused by a growing awareness of the investment value of Polish art of the second half of the 20th century.
Ryszard Winiarski is undoubtedly one of the most prominent Polish representatives of geometric abstraction and indeterminism in art. Winiarski appeared on the art scene unexpectedly in 1966, when, fresh from defending his diploma at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, he was awarded the main prize at the Symposium of Visual Artists held in Puławy. Before studying fine arts at the Faculty of Painting, the artist graduated from Warsaw University of Technology, where he received an engineering degree from the Department of Precision Mechanics. While still a technical student, he attended Alexander Kobzdej's studio as a free student. In later years, he also studied scenography and typography. His simultaneous strong interest in art and science had a decisive influence on the shape of his artistic practice and theory, which he consistently developed throughout his life.
The concept of paintings with a structure determined by chance - the toss of a coin or a dice - was most likely born at Professor Mieczyslaw Porębski's seminar on the relationship between science and art. In 1966 Winiarski proposed a thesis entitled Event-information-image. Even then, he subjects the work to a strict compositional rigor based on the fusion of artistic gesture with mathematical issues such as statistics, probability calculus and game theory. He remains faithful to these activities for the vast majority of his artistic career, leaving behind works-objects that are the product of a theoretical and thought process.
Coincidence in a Game for Three from 1999 represents one of the last works by the artist, who, battered by illness, was unable to create for the last years of his life.