Włodzimierz Jan Zakrzewski. Line and Stroke. Paintings and Works on Paper from 1980s

November 26, 2010 - January 22, 2011

The 1980s remain a relatively obscure period in the career of Włodzimierz Jan Zakrzewski. An alumnus of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (class of Professor Krystyna Łada Studnicka, MFA 1970), he decided to pursue painting in the times dominated by Conceptual Art and New Media. In the 1970s, his works were featured at several individual and group exhibitions. In 1981, he left for the United States planning to spend several months there but the dramatic political developments in Poland (martial law imposed in December 1981) would keep him there for the following two decades. In America, he arrived at a highly individual style interpreted by critics as referring to Constructivism and Malevich's Suprematism. His focus shifted to drawing which became the dominant medium in his art in the 1980s. The drawings, usually small (20 x 20 cm), are on the one hand autonomous works but on the other they are preliminary studies for oil paintings. The aTAK Gallery presents, for the first time in Poland, The Great Drawing (1986), Zakrzewski's principal project from the 1980s. It comprises 49 pieces and sums up the artist's work from this period. The earliest piece featured at the exhibition dates to 1979: it is a black-and-white polyptych, painted in Warsaw prior to the artist's departure, but it already presages the future direction. The most recent piece is the Street series from 1991 informed by the artist's effort to venture beyond the geometrical space.

Exhibition conception: Włodzimierz Nowaczyk.

 

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