Henryk Bukowski (1932–2024), Printemps
Acrylic on paper, 99.5 x 69.5 cm.
Purchased from the artist’s heirs.
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Henryk Bukowski was born in 1932 to a Polish family in Lorraine. In 1951, he moved to Poland, where he began his studies at an art high school and later enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. In 1962, Bukowski settled in Paris, where he experimented with form and color, juxtaposing bold brushstrokes and colorful lines against a monochromatic background. In his paintings from the 1970s, the artist hovered on the border of abstraction, focusing primarily on thickly applied layers of paint and on color contrasts between large, monochromatic surfaces and colorful motifs. In 1982, Bukowski embarked on a long period of travel: over the next eight years, he stayed in places such as Kinshasa (Zaire), Los Angeles (where he lived from 1983 to 1989), and Normandy. During this time, he continued his artistic exploration of color contrasts and the interplay between smooth textures and the thickening of paint, which led to the emergence of raised motifs. In 1990, Henryk Bukowski returned to Paris, where he has lived ever since. Throughout the 1990s, the artist continually experimented with color contrasts, texture, and material, developing his own techniques and using specific materials such as sand. Bukowski exhibited his works in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Poland, the United States, as well as in Italy and France. His art has been and continues to be highly acclaimed by critics and the general public alike. He died in Paris in 2024.
