Jan Tarasin, WITHOUT TITLE, 1990

36.5 x 27.0cm - brown serigraphy, paper

signed under the engraving p.: JTarasin 1990



The painting is unframed.

Jan Tarasin (Kalisz, September 11, 1926 - Warsaw, August 8, 2009) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Prof. Zbigniew Pronaszko (1946-1951). While still a student, he debuted at the First Exhibition of Modern Art in Krakow in 1948/49. In the mid-1950s, he created a series of lithographs: "Nowa Huta and its inhabitants", 1954, "Home", 1955). In the former, he opposed official optimism, while in the latter, using still-life symbolism, he included existential content and referring to the recent drama of the war. After 1956, he began to paint non-figurative paintings. Arrangements of isolated elements (referred to as "objects") were placed by the artist on a plane (series "Interior", 1957) ), or in an allusive space (series "Feast", 1957, "Shore", 1962-1964, "Counted Objects", from 1968, "Antiquarian", 1968). This principle persists in his painting in the following years, the differences between the periods of his work are in the way of elaboration of "objects" and their location in the space of the painting or in relation to the background. Since the 1970s, "objects" are transformed into graphic, usually black signs on light backgrounds (series "Collection," since 1971). The backgrounds, in turn, are sometimes illusively spatial, varied in value, soft. In the 1990s, the artist returned to a colorful, more painterly solution of both signs and backgrounds, often dark or intermingled with "objects" (series "Hatchery of Objects", 1992). Tarasin has been a member of the "Cracow Group" since 1962. In 1963-67 he taught at the Faculty of Interior Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In 1967 he moved to Warsaw, in 1974 he took up teaching at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1987-90 he was the rector of this university. In 1976 he received the Cyprian Kamil Norwid Art Criticism Award, in 1984 the Jan Cybis Award.; Award at the MB of Art in San Marino 1965. In parallel with painting, he engaged in drawing and printmaking - lithography until the 1960s, serigraphy since 1974. In 1974-1981 he published 8 author's "Notebooks" with serigraphs and his own texts. In 1995, an exhibition of the artist was held at the Zachęta Gallery, accompanied by a monographic catalog.