Henryk STAŻEWSKI (1894-1988), Untitled, 1976

acrylic, relief, fiberboard; 22 x 22 cm;
Signed and dated on reverse: 1976 / H, Stażewski and numbered export stamp and ownership stickers.

Henryk Stażewski deserves to be called a classic of contemporary art, if such categorization is acceptable at all. Initially, the artist had a strong relationship with the Lodz art community, Wladyslaw Strzeminski, Blok, Praesens, a.r. groups. The artist was also the initiator of the International Collection of Modern Art, which was the foundation of the collection of the Museum of Art in Lodz. After World War II, he became associated with the Crooked Circle Gallery. He was one of the founding members of the Foksal Gallery. The artist is associated with geometric abstraction, which he took for himself as almost the only form of artistic expression, stemming from his fascination and study - even experience - of form and form layout. The limited color palette he used is due to his inspiration from Dutch neoplasticism. Color in the artist's works appeared gradually, but was always "pure", uniform and expressive. The arrangements he painted, deliberately had neither texture nor painting structure, focusing only on the aforementioned form and arrangement, which also included the viewer and, for example, his positioning in relation to the painting - the angle of view. This is perfectly explained by Anka Ptaszkowska in her text for the catalog of Henryk Stażewski's exhibition, held at Warsaw's Zachęta Gallery in 1966: Stażewski seeks the laws governing a set of identical forms. The individual form is a flat geometric element embedded in space - a plastically indivisible element. The form is the basic "unit" of the painting. The unit superior to it is the set (...). Thus, the individual form is first and foremost an element of a larger system - that is what its function is. (...) In view of the anonymity of individual forms - the fundamental issue becomes their mutual RELATIONSHIP. It has at least two stages: stage I - the relationship between identical forms within a set; stage II - the relationship between sets of different forms. (...).