Jan Lebenstein, Grand Gala, 1976

pen, ink, pastel, gouache, cardboard pasted by the artist onto fiberboard, 99.7 x 74.7 cm, signed and dated p.d.: Lebenstein 76; on the reverse a sticker from Wejman Gallery with a description of the work

provenance: private collection, Poland; private collection, Belgium; Galerie Jan de Maere, Bruxelles; Galerie Derweduwen, Bruxelles; Atelier of the artist, 1977
exhibited: Jan Lebenstein. Capriccia, Wejman Gallery, Warsaw, 2019.
reproduced: Jan Lebenstein. Capriccia, exhibition cat. by Wejman Gallery, Warsaw, 2019, 56-57 pp.

Jan Lebenstein (1930, Brest - 1999, ) Graduated from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1954 under Artur Nacht-Samborski. A year later he made his debut at the Warsaw Arsenal in the exhibition "Against War - Against Fascism." In 1959 he was awarded the Grand Prix at the First Biennale of the Young in Paris, where he delighted the public with his compositions of Axial Figures, which were Lebenstein's artistic response to the condition of a society degraded by war. After the Axial Figures series, the painter's canvases began to feature fantastic beasts, which were often strange hybrids of animals and humans. The artist's works are in the collections of the National Museums in Warsaw, Krakow and Poznan, as well as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Nationale d'Art Moderne in Paris, among others.

Lebenstein seems to nullify the spirit-matter dualism. It is as if the starting point for him is a new interpretation of some chant of the distant past. Elverio Maurizi, art critic