Henryk Berlewi (1894 Warsaw - 1967 Paris), Portrait of a Woman, 1930

Biography
Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, then continued his studies in Antwerp and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Considered a precursor of op-art. Representative of the most avant-garde trend of Polish modern art. He was a member of the "Blok" grouping, and was associated with the European artistic avant-garde - including T. van Doesburg, V. Eggeling, M. van der Rohe, L. Moholy-Nagy. His interest in Constructivism was directed by El Lissitzky, whom the artist met. In the 1920s he exhibited and stayed in Berlin. He had a solo exhibition there in 1926 at Der Sturm gallery. In 1924, he announced his manifesto "Mechano-Faktura," in which he rejected spatial illusion painting in favor of two-dimensional canvases. He limited the color scale to white, black and red and used stencils. In 1928 he settled permanently in Paris and returned to figurative painting - he painted mainly portraits. Recognized by world critics as one of the several hundred most outstanding artists of the 20th century ("ARTof the 20th Century" TASCHEN 2000)