Monotype. Dimensions: 30 x 21 cm, 40 x 29.5 cm
Hand signature. Confirmation of authenticity on the reverse by Barbara Jaroszyńska - Stern
Jonasz Stern (1904-1988) took his first painting lessons privately in Lviv in 1922. From 1928 he studied at the Ludwika Mehoffer Free School of Painting in Krakow, and then from 1929-1935 studied at the Academy of Fine Arts there. During his studies, the Cracow Group (known as the "first" Group, as opposed to the post-war Group, still active today, to which Stern also belonged) was formed in Stern's closest circle and with his participation. The artist was repressed for his membership and activity in the Polish Communist Party, and in 1938 was sent to the camp in Bereza Kartuska. During the Soviet occupation of Lvov, where he found himself at the beginning of the war, he joined the artistic life of Western Ukraine, participated in exhibitions, etc. Under the German occupation, he stayed in the ghetto. Accidentally rescued during a shooting, he escaped to Hungary, where he lived to see the end of the war. After returning to Cracow, he joined the Group of Young Visual Artists centered around Tadeusz Kantor. From 1954 to 1974 he was a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In the initial, pre-war phase of his work, he was influenced by avant-garde trends in art, mainly cubism and expressionism. In the 1940s he created his first abstract compositions, sometimes using the technique of decalcomania, which brought the expression of his works closer to surrealism. Still, he did not shy away from geometric abstraction. During the period of Socialist Realism, like other artists in his circle, he did not join the official art life, conducting his experiments in isolation from the public and critics. After 1956, with the advent of informel art and then matter painting, the form of Stern's painting crystallized as well. He began creating relief structures using fish skeletons, skins, bones and other organic waste. He arranged them into fantastic "landscapes", which he covered with paint and enclosed in showcases, sometimes specially designed. This type of work became a universally recognizable hallmark of Stern's art, including when, instead of fish waste, he began to enclose photographs, textiles, sometimes overburnt, and other symbolic objects in display cases, referring to the dramatic past - his own and that of the Jewish people. He would label his works with ambiguous or metaphorical titles that reinforced their meaning
