Jan Ziemski

Jan Ziemski (1920, Kielce - 1988, Lublin) was a painter counted among the representatives of structural painting and op-art, and also among the most important Polish artists working with geometry. He trained at the Free School of Painting and Drawing in Lublin (1942-46), and then briefly studied medicine at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University and art history at the Catholic University of Lublin. In 1956 he was a co-founder of the Lublin Circle of Young Visual Artists, transformed into the avant-garde „Zamek” Group (active in 1956-1960), which included, among others, Włodzimierz Borowski and the critics Jerzy Ludwiński and Hanna Ptaszkowska.

After an early figurative period and a „fantastical metaphor” (the dynamic „Cosmic Series” of 1955-56), in the time of the „Zamek” Group Ziemski created structural paintings - including the cycle „Formura” using thick texture and relief in a plastic mass applied to a board. From 1965 until his death he consistently realised objects close to op-art: optically deceptive reliefs built from slats on a base, in which the illusion of movement and space merges with the concreteness of matter (cycles such as „Interferences” or „Counterpoint”).

Ziemski understood art as an experiment allowing one to learn the principles of observing reality; he was fascinated by the exact sciences - especially physics and astronomy - belonged to the Society of Astronomy Lovers and was interested in mathematics. He took part in the Symposium in Puławy (1966) and the plein-airs in Osieki; he exhibited at, among others, the Galeria Foksal and the Krzywe Koło Gallery, and his work was recalled by retrospectives at the National Museum in Kielce and the Lublin Museum in Lublin.