Dimensions: 130 x 130 cm
signed p.d.: 'Lenica'
Signed, dated and described on the reverse: 'A. LENICA | WARSAW | 1968 | 'Secession | anti-aesthetic'".
on the reverse exhibition stickers
Provenance
collection of the artist's heirs
private collection, Poland
DESA Unicum, 2022
Exhibited
New Generation and Classics from the Collection of Wojciech Fibak, Centre for Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń, June 28, 2024 - January 5, 2025.
Alfred Lenica, retrospective exhibition, National Museum in Wroclaw, September 3 - October 19, 2014.
Alfred Lenica, retrospective exhibition, Arsenal City Gallery, Poznan, February 3-February 17, 2002.
Alfred Lenica, retrospective exhibition, Palace of Art, Cracow, 2002.
Alfred Lenica. Painting, Zachęta Gallery, Warsaw, March 7-24, 1974
Exhibition of contemporary Polish painting, Cepelia Gallery, New York, November-December 1971
Exhibition of Polish art, Sveagalleriet, Stockholm, September-October 1968
Literature
New Generation and Classics of Modernity from the Collection of Wojciech Fibak, exhibition catalog, Center for Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu, ed. Krzysztof Stanisławski, Anna Kompanowska, Toruń 2024, p. 203 (il)
Alfred Lenica, exhibition catalog, National Museum in Wroclaw, ed. Beata Gawrońka-Oramus, Wrocław 2014, p. 205 (il.).
Alfred Lenica. Painting, exhibition catalog, Zachęta Gallery, compiled by. Helena Szustakowska, Helena Zacharewicz, Warsaw 1974, item 551
Biography
Polish painter, father of Jan Lenica and Danuta Konwicka. Father-in-law of Tadeusz Konwicki. He began his studies in 1922 at the law and economics department of Poznan University. At the same time he studied music at the Conservatory of Music. He furthered his painting interests by studying at the Private Institute of Fine Arts run by Adam Hannytkiewicz. In the 1930s, Alfred Lenica painted figurative paintings, primarily still lifes and landscapes, taking his inspiration from Cubism. At the beginning of the war, the Lenica family was displaced from Poznan and went to Krakow. The war time was a turning point in the painter's career. The Krakow artistic milieu centered around Tadeusz Kantor, especially his friendship with Jerzy Kujawski, resulted in a deepening of the painter's interest in the avant-garde. In 1945, Alfred Lenica returned to Poznan, where he became involved in artistic activities. In 1947 he became a co-founder of the avant-garde group 4F+R. After years of trials and explorations, Lenica moved increasingly towards abstraction and Tashism. In 1948 he took part in the First Exhibition of Modern Art in Cracow organized by Tadeusz Kantor. In addition to his search for and fascination with abstraction, Alfred Lenica actively participated in the Socialist Realist trend, creating many realistic paintings in the early 1950s. In the first half of the 1950s, during the period of Socialist Realism, Lenica interrupted his creative experiments, turning to the artistic doctrine introduced by political imperative. Because of his political beliefs, it was a return for him to the socially and politically engaged paintings he had already painted in the 1930s. At that time he painted such paintings as "Young Bierut among the Workers" (1949), "Pstrowski and Comrades," "Admission to the Party," and "Red Poster" (1950). For his own use, he also tried to combine formal experiments with ideologically committed subject matter, as in his 1953 work "Losing Day Laborers," in which he used collage and monotype. From 1955, Alfred Lenica's painting style, which would accompany him until his death, finally clarified. The style was a combination of Tashism, Surrealism, Informel and Dripping. It involved large-format oil paintings painted in a technique developed earlier by the artist (getting color translucence from under successive layers of paint), which he later perfected and developed. Lenica readily used lacquers and industrial paints. He presented a style of abstract painting with a Surrealist-Expressionist tinge. Lenica traveled extensively; at the invitation of the United Nations, he was in Geneva in 1959/60, where he created a mural painting "Three Elements" (Water, Fire and Love) at the headquarters of the organization. He maintained constant contact with the domestic artistic avant-garde, exhibited with the Cracow Group, took part in most open-air events in Osieki near Koszalin, and participated in the symposium "Art in a Changing World" in 1966 in Puławy.
