Composition

Mieczysław Janikowski graduated from the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts on the threshold of the outbreak of the Second World War. He studied there under the direction of Kazimierz Sichulski and Stefan Filipkiewicz - artists associated with the Young Poland current, focusing their attention on documenting the beauty not only of the native landscape but also of folk culture. He was wounded during the fighting in the September Campaign and evacuated to Great Britain. During his convalescence he became acquainted with the work of Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard. After the war the artist began studies at the College of Art in Edinburgh, where he received a grant enabling him to travel to Paris, where he settled permanently in 1947, initially sharing a studio with Stanisław Grabowski in the famous building - the „La Ruche” rotunda. The painter was also a friend of Józef Czapski - a member of the Paris Committee who, together with, among others, Piotr Potworowski, Zygmunt Waliszewski and Jan Cybis, left for Paris in 1924, where the branch of the Kraków art school was ultimately established. The diversity of the artistic milieus with which Mieczysław Janikowski could become acquainted during his stay in Paris was a broad range, reaching from Polish tendencies realised on French soil, such as the Kapist compositions of Jan Cybis, through the expressive Colourist painting of Józef Czapski, contact with the art of the Fauves operating with intense contrasting colours, represented by Henri Matisse, the works of artists using elements of action painting - Tachisme - and the works of Victor Vasarely, regarded as a precursor of op-art. It can be considered that Mieczysław Janikowski's work was based on an interesting common point, which was colour, understood, however, quite differently than all the tendencies mentioned above. His non-figurative paintings, balancing on the edge of geometric abstraction, are linked by the chromaticity of the colours used. He was an artist who claimed that: „A straight line set against a curved one is already a drama, so why paint more?”