Untitled

The works of one of the most important artists of geometric painting still remain the most sought-after on the market. At the Polswiss Art auction house, at this year's auction, his Relief no. 31 from 1973 (61.3 x 61.3 cm) was sold for 300,000 zlotys (excluding the auction premium). In turn, in the same period, at the auction at DESA Unicum, Relief no. 11 from 1972 (59 x 59 cm) was sold for 280,000 zlotys (excluding the auction premium). Henryk Stażewski, alongside Władysław Strzemiński, was one of the pioneers of geometric art in Poland. Both were active in the artistic groups Blok, Praesens, a.r. Stażewski was also associated with Marian Bogusz's Krzywe Koło gallery and was one of the founding members of the Galeria Foksal. Geometry, which the artist chose as almost his only means of artistic statement, gave him the possibility of studying pure form and its arrangement in relation to itself. The limited colour palette used by Henryk Stażewski may have its source in the art of Dutch Neoplasticism, which was gradually supplemented by colour that was often „pure”, uniform and vivid. The artist's paintings deliberately had no texture or painterly structure; they focused solely on shapes and their interdependence - their relations. Henryk Stażewski regarded the angle at which the viewer looks at the composition as also an element of this arrangement. „Stażewski's artistic stance derives from two philosophical traditions: rationalism and absolutism. Thanks to the first, art based on geometric-arithmetic laws was certain of the unlimited possibilities of the rational cognition of the world. The second tradition determined the conviction that aesthetics, in the course of its own development, tends towards the absolute. Art is able to capture the totality of the laws of the universe in a single rule.” („Stażewski internacjonał”, Andrzej Turowski, in: Henryk Stażewski. Ekonomia Myślenia, Warsaw, 2005, p. 47.) PROVENANCE: - private collection, Poland - Desa Unicum - Auction of 11.10.2018 (lot 22)