The Sabine Women 4

PROVENANCE: - Purchased directly from the artist's heirs; - Private collection, Warsaw. The painting of Eugeniusz Markowski is associated with the current of the new figuration on account of its unconstrained, „wild” form of artistic expression. The artist depicts simplified, zoomorphic figures, using for this intense, pure colours that lend an expressive character to the often hieratic compositions, which barely fit within the frame of the canvas. In the artist's works one may seek archetypes and a symbolic or moralising-critical overtone, generalised at the same time to the primal needs or features of the human species. Some of Markowski's compositions are accompanied by literary quotations placed in the margins of the paintings, constituting a commentary on what the artist has depicted. The painter graduated from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1938, but initially devoted himself to a career as a diplomat and journalist. He returned to Poland in 1955 and only then began to paint. Eugeniusz Markowski created series of paintings with analogous titles and different numbers. He repeatedly worked through the theme that preoccupied him.