Kajetan Sosnowski

Kajetan Sosnowski (1913-1987) was a painter, draughtsman and graphic artist - an excellent abstractionist and one of the leading representatives of the post-war avant-garde. In 1934-1939 he studied at the Faculty of Painting of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (under Tadeusz Pruszkowski and Władysław Jastrzębski). After the war he actively organised Polish artistic life - he founded art schools in Siedlce and Łódź, co-created the Łódź branch of the Union of Polish Visual Artists, and in 1955 he was one of the founders of Group 55 in Warsaw and the Krzywe Koło Gallery; he also took part in organising the Biennale of Spatial Forms in Elbląg and Gallery 72 in Chełm.

Characteristic of Sosnowski was experimentation with painterly form inspired by the exact sciences - he was an enthusiast of chemistry and physics, and on the window of his studio he set up a chemical laboratory for himself. He was fascinated by the phenomena of light and colour. From the 1950s he created abstract compositions, and from the end of the 1960s his work was dominated by his characteristic cycles: the ascetic „empty paintings”, the „chemical paintings” and the „sewn paintings” - monochrome compositions sewn together from pieces of canvas, resulting from intellectual reflection and mathematical divisions (including „Catalipomena”, „Equivalent Systems”, „1st Alternative of White Paintings”).

In the 1980s the „Black Paintings” referring to national martyrdom came into being, as well as the cycle „Interventions” with the motif of the cross. Sosnowski's work - from the early „Erotica” to the radically reduced abstractions - is one of the most original phenomena of 20th-century Polish art; in 1998 his solo exhibition at the Zachęta was accompanied by a monograph by Bożena Kowalska. A laureate of the C.K. Norwid Award, he has works in the largest museum collections, and one of them recently entered the collection of the Centre Pompidou.