Stefan Gierowski (1925), IMAGE CCCXXV, before 1976.

oil/canvas, 100 x 70 cm
signed and described on the reverse: OB. CCCXXV | s gierowski
on the reverse of the loom handwritten inscription regarding the provenance of the painting and a paper sticker from Desa, dedication

Between 1945-48, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow in the atelier of Zbigniew Pronaszko and Karol Frycz, as well as art history at Jagiellonian University. Since 1949, he has lived in Warsaw, where he co-founded the Krzywe Koło Gallery (1956-61) and taught at the Academy of Fine Arts. Since 1957, he has consistently created numbered abstract paintings (dealing with light, movement and space). Participated in numerous exhibitions (including the Venice Art Biennale in 1968). In 1980 he was awarded the Jan Cybis Prize. One of the most important creators of abstract art in Poland, a doyen described as a "classic of abstraction".

The featured painting was painted by the artist during a period of his work that summed up the search and experiments of the past decade. "This period of exploration meant, in Gierowski's case, striving to solve the problem of space in a more than ever laboratory, intellectual way, with a renunciation of any longing for aestheticization. At the junctions with the color-differentiated ribbon of borders, the monochromatic fields of squares seemed to bend and emphasize, changing the shade of color deceptively. Bożena Kowalska (B. Kowalska, Creators - attitudes, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Krakow, 1981, p. 100)

The uniformly colored central area of the square was edged with a two-colored border, a "frame".[...] In the wide ribbon of the frame, light grows elusively and slowly, and then the uniformly colored rectangle inside - it seems to dusk surrounded by white and flare towards the darkening of the "frame". Bożena Kowalska [ibid, p.101]. The composition of the work is simple and economical.