Dep Art Gallery presents the solo exhibition of Polish artist Stanisław Fijałkowski (1922–2020) in Milan from June 21 to September 16, 2023.
The exhibition, curated by Alberto Zanchetta, marks the artist's return to Italy after his participation in the XXXVI Venice Art Biennale in 1972. A selection of 27 works brings the Italian public closer to Fijałkowski's pictorial evolution, from which emerges the artist's predilection for a gestural abstraction that is influenced by Central European pictorial experience and an emotional approach to colour.
Considered a master of abstract painting, his compositions play with minimalist forms and colour. All of his works are characterised by large fields of intense hues, ranging from the delicate colours of his early years to the darker shades of his later period, which often serve as a backdrop for graphic signs and shapes traceable to geometric elements. During the 1960s, the materiality and chromatic exuberance diminished to make way for pure painting. Circular shapes, cones, ribbons, or lines recur on the canvases, which from the 1970s will evolve into the famous Highways series, tending upward, tracing a path of individual ascent. An underlying spirituality emerges, experientially catalysing a feeling aimed at electing painting as an emblem of a living that is unaffected by the crisis of the modern world 'in relation to a desacralised world.'
The rise to freedom, foretold by Fijałkowski, is closely linked to interiority and spiritual life. In a modern world increasingly devoid of sacredness, the renunciation of materialism becomes a source of hope and salvation. As Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky argued, colour and abstraction offer privileged access to the soul, allowing it to awaken and vibrate. Fijałkowski's works, although distant from traditional art, cannot be called abstract, as the artist immersed himself completely in the painting process, using it as a means of abstracting himself from time and space and attaining transcendence, seeking to transcend the limits of two-dimensionality, circumscribing the painting as a foundational rite and preserving its secrets. Each work was an expression of singularity and represented an adventure related to Fijałkowski's spiritual life. As curator Alberto Zanchetta writes, 'The artist's main concern was not to create something new but something authentic. Depriving art of narcissistic embellishments and intellectual lucubrations, Fijałkowski immersed himself in his own expressive medium: painting flowed spontaneously, guided by ecstatic rapture.' From the youthful paintings influenced by post-Cubism and Fauves, to the mature works that explore pure painting and the spiritual ascent of the individual, Fijałkowski's artistic journey is manifested in all its maturity: through the reduction of signs and colours to the bare minimum, Fijałkowski emphasises the emotional intensity of his works. Each painting is a singular entity, an independent subject with its own spiritual life. The artist's works exempt affectation and sloppiness, as they represent the authentic expression of an adventure linked to an intense and unrepeatable mental-emotional condition.
The exhibition also explores the historical and cultural context in which Fijałkowski's art developed. In postwar Poland, artists were engaged in the search for answers to questions of art and ideas. The generation of artists to which Fijałkowski belongs is distinguished by their self-determination and search for their own place in the changing artistic landscape. By means of the painting process, the artist freed himself from any binding chains to the external world, thus seeking to reach the transcendent and opening a path to communication with the divine.
Stanisław Fijałkowski (Zdołbunów 1922 – Łódź 2020) was a student of Władysław Strzemiński and Stefan Wegner and a professor at the Łódź Academy of Arts in Poland. Considered among Poland's most recognized artists, his works are part of the world's major museum and gallery collections, including the Tate in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
Press release courtesy Dep Art Gallery.
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