Roman Artymowski (1919-1993), LANDSCAPE CLXXXV, 1988.

acrylic/canvas, 81 x 60 cm
signed, dated and described on the reverse: ROMAN ARTYMOWSKI | LANDSCAPE
CLXXXV, 1988 | acrylic | 81 x 60 cm
EXHIBITED:
- Roman Artymowski, Selected Works, National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw 1998.
- Roman Artymowski 1919-1993, Painting-graphics, Exhibition on the 100th anniversary of his birth, Museum in Łowicz, 2019
LITERATURE:
- Roman Artymowski, Selected Works, National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw 1998 [item 88, cat. no. 6].

In 1959 Roman Artymowski traveled to Baghdad, where he taught printmaking techniques. Contact with the Middle Eastern landscape caused a change in his conception of landscape painting. The artist began to geometrize and decided to radically reduce his repertoire of motifs. Over the years there are numerous paintings of identical composition - minimalist, with the sun depicted above the horizon line. The sun becomes the artist's obsession: "With us the sun is a joy - there the most dangerous enemy. Everything is hidden from the sun [...] Iraq is generally flat, in the desert everything happens on the horizon line, the desert increases the scale of every object - by the lack of contrast." The sun's disc takes on all sorts of colors that make the representation unreal. The landscape is transformed into a symbolic landscape. On the one hand, the artist maintains a serene harmony through formal austerity, on the other hand, with the help of colors, he strongly affects the emotions of the viewer. Sometimes the sun is warmed up to whiteness, at other times it seems extinct, dead - blue or dark blue. We are also familiar with black suns from Artymowski's graphic "Pessimistic Landscapes". The sun in the presented painting imposes itself on the viewer with its red heat. It not only emanates a powerful energy, but generously shares it with the viewer.