Dimensions: 76 x 76 cm
signed, dated and inscribed on the stretcher on the reverse: 'JULIAN STANCZAK "FOLDING SECRETS" 1967'
on the reverse an author's dedication: 'To Mat | Julian Stanczak 1968'.
Provenance
purchased directly from the artist
collection of Matthew Wysocki
Skinner, 2013
private collection, Poland
Desa Unicum, 2017
private collection, Switzerland
Literature
Marta Smolińska, Julian Stańczak. Op-art and the dynamics of perception, Warsaw 2014, p. 178 (ill.)
Biography
Polish painter residing in the United States, one of the pioneers of op-art. In 1940 he and his entire family were arrested by the Soviets and deported to Siberia. As a result of hard labor and illness, he lost power in his right hand. He fled the Soviet Union with his family to Africa, where he lived in a camp for refugees from Poland. He spent his youth in Uganda where he took his first lessons in drawing with his left hand. He had his first exhibition of his work in Nairobi (Kenya). In 1949 he emigrated with his family to the UK, where he began studying at London Polytechnic and in 1950 moved to the US. There he began his studies at the Cleveland Art Institute, graduating in 1954, and then studied at Yale, where he earned a Master of Art Sciences degree. In 1964 he became a professor of painting at the Cleveland Art Institute in Cleveland, Ohio.