Ryszard Winiarski

Ryszard Winiarski (1936, Lviv - 2006, Warsaw) was a painter, creator of spatial forms and stage designer. He first completed the Faculty of Precision Mechanics of the Warsaw University of Technology (1953-59), and then studied painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (diploma 1966); of fundamental importance to him were the classes on the connections between art and science conducted by Professor Mieczysław Porębski. Already in his diploma work „Event - Information - Image” (1966) he formulated the theory of „programming images” and showed the series „Attempts at a Visual Presentation of Statistical Distributions”, for which he received the main award at the Symposium of Artists and Scientists in Puławy.

Winiarski scrupulously translated the problems of the exact sciences into the language of art, making use of statistics, probability theory, the theory of chance and the mathematical theory of games. His hallmark became square canvases with multi-element arrangements of smaller black and white squares - equivalents of the binary system - whose placement was decided by chance (a roll of the dice, a draw, numbers from stock-exchange tables or tram tickets). He preferred to speak of a „system” and of „areas” rather than of art, striving for an impersonal work devoid of emotion.

In time Winiarski introduced the third dimension and mirrors, and from 1972 he arranged „games” with the participation of viewers, who by his method filled a plane or a room with their own „exhibition”; after 1980 spatial forms came into being - „geometry in a state of tension”. He was a professor and vice-rector of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, had over 50 solo exhibitions, and his works were shown at, among others, the São Paulo Biennale and the Biennale of Constructivism in Nuremberg.