Wladyslaw HASIOR (1928-1999), Scene in the Park, 1986

Own technique, assemblage, color print, mirror, oil, plywood;
73 x 147 x 7 cm (dimension of the whole composition in the author's frame);
Inscribed and signed on the reverse on an author's sticker: SCENA W PARKU/1986R./Hasior Wł 147/73/7 (handwritten inscription).

"The conglomeration of influences prompts one to determine their provenance. This has been done many times, once recognizing that the dominant feature of his compositions are references to folk and Christian traditions, at other times looking for similarities with Rauschenberg, with the primitive art of Africa. These interrelationships can be analyzed separately, but little will come of it. Only their sum defines Hasior's work. It is, however, brought closer by the realization that this artist, brought up in natural surroundings, in the continuing tradition of indulgences, fairs, the fading but memorable belief in witchcraft and sorcery, in the bizarre symbiosis of bourgeois stereotypes with sacred highland art, discovered independently what was the basis for the birth of art - he discovered magic. Since then, he has proceeded as was once done in Europe, in Africa, as is done by the creators of popular culture, for whom the likeness of a film actress, a song idol, a Coca-Cola advertisement is what the mask of a Negro idol was for others. From the late seventies, early eighties, his art becomes more and more sublime, aestheticizing, colorful. He absorbs and transforms religious kitsch and secular kitsch, adapts what floods us through the mass media, shapes the collective imagination (...)."
Lit. by M. Hermansdorfer, Collection of Polish Contemporary Art of the National Museum in Wroclaw, Wroclaw 2010, p. 43.