Wojciech Fangor (1922-2015)

mixed technique, paper, 29x28.5 cm

Painter, printmaker, author of environments. During the war years (1940-1944), he studied privately with Tadeusz Pruszkowski and Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski, and received his diploma in absentia from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1946. In 1953-1961 he was a docent at his alma mater. He left Poland in 1961 and lived in the United States since 1966. In 1970 he had a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. After 33 years, he returned to Poland. During the Socialist Realist period, he painted famous paintings such as Figures and Mother Korean, as well as many posters. Co-creator (with Henryk Tomaszewski) of the decorations for the Festival of Youth and Students in Warsaw in 1955. In 1957, with Stanislaw Zamecznik and Oskar Hansen, he presented the first Polish environment Spatial Composition at Zachęta, and later others, including Space Study (1958).
In these projects, Fangor sought to explore modes of perception and the relationship between individual images. In the 1960s, he painted abstract, Op art canvases with a motif of colorful circles and waves with jittery, blurred contours and in contrasting colors that gave the illusion of movement and space. In the 1980s, he returned to figuration, often quoting well-known works of world art. He used academic nudes over which he superimposed abstract, geometric