100,0 x 80,0 cm - oil, canvas
Signed on the reverse on canvas p.g.: S . Gierowski | Ob. DCCCLXXXII | 2011
Stefan Gierowski (Częstochowa 1925 - 2022) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (among others with Jerzy Fedkowicz and Zbigniew Pronaszko) and art history at the Jagiellonian University. In 1949 he moved to Warsaw. In 1955 he took part in an exhibition at the Arsenal. During this period he practiced figurative painting with existentialist accents. In 1957, he created the first painting marked with the number I - since then the artist does not use literary titles, calling his works "Paintings" and numbering them with Roman numerals. The artist became associated with the Krzywe Koło Gallery in Warsaw, where he had solo exhibitions in 1957 and 1959. His paintings break out of the definitions of both informel-type abstraction and post-constructivist art, although they bear features of both. They are characterized, especially in the early period, by a sophisticated play of texture and colors, which allows us to see in Gierowski a continuator of the school of Polish colorism. In the 1960s, in paintings of decisive composition, he exposed valor effects. Since the 1970s, he focused more attention on the interplay of color fields, either contrasted or broken into patches of pure pigment. This theme in the 1980s gained a significant addition. The artist undertook a search for forms and compositional arrangements that could become the visual equivalent of verbal concepts (the 1986 series "Painting the Ten Commandments"). From 1961 to 1995 Gierowski was a teacher at the Warsaw Academy, from 1976 - a professor, from 1975 to 1981 - dean of the Faculty of Painting. He led a studio distinguished by its program and intellectual level, from which many outstanding painters emerged. In 1983, he was elected rector by the Academy Senate, but the choice was not approved by the authorities. The artist's attitude towards martial law - in which he was also a model for his students - contributed to this.
