Janusz Bersz, Fantasy Composition

Watercolor, paper, size 30 x 42 cm, signed and dated p.d. "J Bersz 1982"

Jan Bersz (1925 - 1985) is a versatile and thoroughly educated artist. Wartime fate threw him to France, where he took up painting studies at Ecole Nationale Superieure Des Beaux-Arts. He continued his studies after returning to his native Poznań at the local State Higher School of Fine Arts under Eustachy Wasilkowski. At the same time, he took up medical studies at the University of Poznan. His later encounter with the work of Piotr Potworowski gave direction to his creative pursuits. His undaunted energy and diverse fields of art - painting, gouache, drawing, ceramics, which he practiced, resulted in numerous exhibitions both at home and abroad. Called the "lyrical poet of informel," he most often expressed himself in abstract, organic compositions, becoming a prominent representative of allusive abstraction in the 1960s. In later years, his palette changed and his formless abstraction transformed, tending toward metaphor and surrealism, only to return at the end of his life to figurative subjects drawn from mythology, magic and fantasy.