Alfred Lenica, FIERCE GRACE, 1958-1967

80,0 x 92,0 cm - oil, canvas signed p.d.: Lenica

signed on the opposite side on canvas l.g.: ŻARLIWE GRACJE, p.g.: A. LENICA | WARSAW | 1958-1967 | PARIS

In the painting Zealous Graces, Alfred Lenica drew on the "Three Graces" motif, known since antiquity. In Greek mythology, the Charites (in Roman mythology, the Graces) were goddesses of grace, beauty and joy. In art, they were depicted as dancing, voluptuous women whose beauty conformed to the beauty ideals of the age. Among the best known, we can mention Rafael Santi's Three Graces or Peter Paul Rubens. Alfred Lenica treated the subject in a manner characteristic of his style, covering the canvas with vibrant, dynamic forms that connote organic shapes. It is the title given by the artist that provokes interpretation and, in the tangle of abstract spots and lines, makes one look for the three "ardent Graces."



♣ to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, will be added a fee based on the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)

Alfred Lenica (Pabianice 1899 - Warsaw 1977) studied drawing and painting privately in the studios of Artur Hannytkiewicz and Piotr Kubowicz in Poznań (1925-1928). In the 1930s he painted figurative paintings, referring in style to Cubism. A little later he succumbed to the influence of Surrealism, which, leaving aside the years of Socialist Realism, would become his most serious area of painterly exploration. Since the mid-1940s, he maintained regular contacts with the circle of the "Cracow Group" and was friends with Jerzy Kujawski. After moving to Poznan, in 1947 he became a co-founder of the avant-garde group "4F+R" (paint, form, fantasy, texture + realism). He is the author of the first Polish Tasist painting (Paints in Motion, 1949, tempera). During the period of Socialist Realism, he joined the mainstream of official art, working simultaneously as an organizer of artistic life, president of the Poznañ District of ZPAP (1948-1950) and at the same time head of the Visual Arts Studio there. At the end of the 1950s, he moved to War-szawa and also here, until 1969, held managerial positions in ZPAP. In the second half of the 1950s, he again - after the experiments of the 1940s - practiced informel, painting eagerly using the dripping technique. Around 1958, he developed an individual, distinctive style of swirling, colorful, sometimes calligraphic forms that dynamically filled the fields of paintings. He created them using a technique akin to surrealist decalcomania. This style became the artist's trademark for the rest of his life. In his paintings he did not shy away from shapes referring to natural forms (his painting was called "biological"), and in the 1970s he sometimes included figural motifs in his compositions. The artist's retrospective exhibition was held at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw in 1974.