Jan ZIEMSKI (1920-1988), Relief, 1976

acrylic, wood slats, board; 50.5 x 50.5 x approx. 10 cm;
Signed and dated on back: JAN ZIEMSKI / 1976; below, paper,
printed sticker with handwritten information from the company
DESA.
EXHIBITED:
- Jan Ziemski, Gallery 72, Chelm, 1978.

Jan Ziemski was a member of the Lublin art community. With his
participation in 1956, the local art group "Castle" began to form.
It included artists such as Włodzimierz Borowski, Tytus
Dzieduszycki and Ryszard Kiwerski, as well as art critics Jerzy Ludwiński and Hanna
Ptaszkowska. A year later, during their third joint exhibition, the artists
published the group's assumptions, which can be boiled down to perfecting the
art form and conducting intensive research into its development.
The artist emerging issue of space or the formation of matter
develops, in the light of analytical sciences - mathematics and physics. In 1965
he was invited to participate in the Golden Grape symposium in Zielona
Gora. During a train trip he took at the time, he observed a snapshot of the
optical phenomenon of overlapping two rhythms. This
accidental image eventually shaped the form of reliefs that generate
movement in space, which today are enjoyed by collectors. Bozena
Kowalska vividly characterizes the means used and the effect whose
achieving was the goal for Jan Ziemski: "These were already those [...] square
pictorial surfaces, on which he affixed in flat relief, rhythmically
arranged and arched slats. He then attached in an analogous
rhythm of the slats rising in a convex arc above the relief ground.
In this way, the two rhythms of the semicircles overlap, with the movement of sliding
side by side with them, causing a phenomenon of peculiar interference, a flight of
of a non-existent and indefinite form." The resulting effect also fulfilled an idea,
on which Jan Ziemski worked regarding the problem of "vanishing images".
Its fulfillment was the form presented in 1969 during the
IV Golden Grape Symposium in Zielona Gora.