Wojciech Fangor

Radom, Jacek Malczewski National Museum, 1994-97 (on loan)

The canvas has not been lined. Ultra-violet light reveals some very few small dots of cosmetic retouching, not visible to the naked eye, in the black pigments. The work is otherwise in very good original condition and is ready to hang. Presented unframed.
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Painted by applying successive layers of oil paint on a primed canvas, SM2 consists of alternated shades of white, blue and black that merge into one another. Colours are bright and the blurred contours confer a particular sense of movement, whose intensity has the power to change according to the viewer’s position.

In the 1950s Wojciech Fangor turned away from social-realism to more experimental art. Having co-founded the Polish School of Poster Art, he later collaborated with his architect friend Stanisław Zamecznik on issues of space, colour and public interaction, which resulted in the exhibition Study for a Space in 1958 in Warsaw, considered one of the first environmental exhibitions.

When Fangor moved to the United States in the mid 1960s, some of his work had already been featured in the Fifteen Polish Painters exhibition at MoMA in 1961, and in the seminal Op Art group show, The Responsive Eye at MoMA in 1965.  Post-war abstraction focused on light and colour had its roots in European Avant-gardes, and painters including Josef Albers, who had fled Germany for the United States following the rise of Nazism, had played an important role in its development. Op Art was a term used to encompass artists with different backgrounds and styles, whose practice included the use of geometric shapes mostly with the intention to create an optical illusion. On the other hand, Fangor’s work has more in common with aspects of Minimalism than Op Art. Fangor has stated his interest lies less in aesthetic experience or optical illusion, but instead in the effects that his paintings have on the viewer by changing their physical perception, and thus their interaction with the surrounding space. 

Having returned to Poland in the 1990s, Wojciech Fangor is now considered one of Poland's foremost contemporary artists.