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General Collection |
Julian
Stanczak
Polish / American, born 1928
Forced
to Choose, 1999
Acrylic on canvas
70” x 105”
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Stanczak has been likened to a magician who transforms color,
line, and shape into vibrant surfaces that challenge our perception
of reality. Like other artists interested in the optical effects
of color and line, he makes paintings composed of lines of varying
widths repeated in a sequence of positions so that they seem
to move up and down and at the same time to create a surface
that advances and recedes into convex and concave swells. In
his pulsating compositions, colors glow, lines dance, shapes
fold, and form hovers elusively before our eyes.
Polish born, Stanczak aspired to be a cellist before being forced
into a Siberian labor camp where he lost the use of his right
arm. At age 13 he joined the Polish army in exile in Persia and
learned to paint left-handed in Africa. Eventually he studied
art at Yale and settled in Cleveland, where he taught art for
many years.
Forced to Choose is a gift from alumnus Neil Rector,
a major collector of the art of leaders in the movement known variously as Op
Art, Optical Art, or, more recently, Color Function Painting.
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