Ursula Broll, WITHOUT TITLE, 1957

34.5 x 49.0cm - oil, brush ink, cardboard signed in pencil p.d.: broll | 1957



A work from the late period of the artist's activity in the St-53 group, when she became fascinated with informel painting, especially textural solutions leading to matter painting. A similar Red Composition from the turn of 1956/57 is reproduced in the monographic catalog: Urszula Broll [published by] Art Gallery in Jelenia Gora, Gallery of Contemporary Art in Katowice, 2005, p. 52. In the introduction, Janusz Zagrodzki characterizes this stage of the artist's work as follows: The matter of Broll's paintings stems directly from the successive stages of creation, it is a consequence of the internal connections of the emerging microstructure. Reflections of reds, greens and yellows emerge from the restless textural surface, shaped from varnish and oil paints solidifying according to the natural laws of the material. (Janusz Zagrodzki, Urszula Broll and the St-53 Group, in cat. jw., p. 14)



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Urszula Broll studied at the Katowice branch of the Faculty of Graphics of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (now the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice). She received her diploma in 1955. While still a student, through Konrad Swinarski, with whom she was friends, she came into contact with a group of young artists independently exploring the ideas of Władysław Strzemiński's art. In 1953, together with Swinarski, as well as Klaudiusz Jędrusik, Hilary Krzysztofiak, Maria Obremba, Zdzisław Stanek and others, she formed the St-53 Group (the name referred as much to the name of the patron as to the place where the group was founded - Stalinogród at the time). The St-53 Group was one of the most important centers of the so-called artistic underground in Poland in the 1950s. It was active until 1958. Broll participated in all its exhibitions. In the 1950s, she also participated in the Second and Third Exhibitions of Modern Art in Warsaw (1957 and 1959) and in the Exhibition of Painting on the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Polish People's Republic, National Museum, Warsaw 1961. She also participated in two editions of the "Golden Grape" Symposium in Zielona Gora (1971 and 1977) and in other group exhibitions. Her works from the 1950s evolved from figural representations, gradually becoming more geometric and synthetic, to abstraction, referring directly to Strzemiński (the "Afterimages" series). Since the late 1960s, the artist became interested in Tashism and matter painting, creating textural compositions, using non-standard materials such as lacquer, sand, etc. In the late 1960s, she affiliated herself with the Oneiron group, formed in Katowice in a circle of artists inspired by the philosophy of Buddhism. Its members included Henryk Waniek and the artist's husband at the time, Andrzej Urbanowicz (hence she is also known as Broll-Urbanowicz). The main theme of the artist's work at the time was watercolors. In them she referred to the sign and symbol systems of Buddhist religion and Carl Gustav Jung's theory of archetypes, transposing them into individual compositions of interpenetrating color zones, mandalas, etc. Since 1983, the artist has lived in the Jelenia Gora area. She creates atmospheric landscapes, showing misty, distant mountain ranges. She presented her works from this period at exhibitions such as: "Meditations and Art", Cracow 1989, "Wonderful Landscape. Artists and Art Colonies in the Karkonosze Mountains in the 20th Century," Jelenia Gora - Wroclaw - Berlin - Ratingen - Hösel - Görlitz, 1999-2000.