Dimensions: 135 x 150 cm
Signed, dated, and labeled on the reverse: 'TERESA PĄGOWSKA 1974 | MONOCHROMAT VII | 135 x 150 cm'
Mounting instructions on the reverse
Provenance
Purchased directly from the artist, Warsaw, 1975
Collection of Arthur and Elisabeth Dempster
Biography
She graduated from the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznań, where she studied painting and mural techniques under Wacław Taranczewski and Eustachy Wasilkowski. During her studies, she served as an assistant to Jacek Piasecki. From 1950 to 1964, she taught at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, after which she moved to Warsaw. After a break of several years, she resumed her teaching career: from 1971 to 1973 at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Łódź (now the Academy of Fine Arts), and then for many years at the Warsaw Academy. In 1988, she was awarded the title of full professor. The artist has always displayed an extraordinary sensitivity to color, developed under the influence of Piotr Potworowski’s art. She focused, however, on the human figure. In the 1960s, her painting was dominated by the motif of a heavily distorted, schematically rendered human (primarily female) figure, often depicted in unexpected, dynamic, and frequently dance-like poses. Since then, the human figure has been present in her paintings as a compact, powerful silhouette devoid of individual features. The artist readily employed sharp clashes of general shapes and contrasts of solid-color patches. Through this stylization, she strips her subjects of any unambiguous character.
