Background
Wojciech Fangor was born on November 15, 1922 in Warsaw.
He studied privately with Tadeusz Pruszkowski and Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski during 1940 - 1944 and in 1946 he received a diploma in absentia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
painter sculptor graphic designer
Wojciech Fangor was born on November 15, 1922 in Warsaw.
Wojciech studied privately with Tadeusz Pruszkowski and Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski during 1940 - 1944 and in 1946 he received a diploma in absentia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
Fangor's interest in art wasn't hindered by the outbreak of World War II. In 1946 he received a diploma in absentia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw where he was assistant professor between 1953 and 1961. In the absurdity of post-war Poland, Fangor took the expressionist and impressionist styles of the French masters early on in his career. When in 1949 the authorities instated realism as the only legitimate form of art, Fangor began painting his signature 'characters' of contemporary Polish society. His transition from impressionism and abstraction into realism was relatively smooth, his work rather different from the typical image of Socio-realism of the time.
Exploring color, space, and their manifold relationships as his fundamental means of expression, the artist evolved a unique visual language reflecting his artistic interests, discoveries, and innovations. His very personal approach to form and the manner in which it was intended to affect viewers resembled much more closely the three-dimensional perception of sculptors or architects, than that of painters with their emphasis on the two-dimensional and the mimetic.
Over the years he began expanding his oeuvre to create installations, such as the 1958 “Study of Space” exhibition at the New Culture Salon in Warsaw, and architectural projects, such as the renovation of the interior of the restaurant at the capital's horseracing track, the design of the Central Department Store in Warsaw, the Polish Pavilion at the World Exhibition in Brussels and the interiors of the Central Train Station (Śródmieście) in Warsaw.
In 1951, he was awarded second prize at the II National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Warsaw for his paintings “Lenin in Poronin” and “Korean Mother.” In 1957, he participated in the II Exhibition of Modern Art organized at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, where he exhibited “A Composition of Space”, created together with Oskar Hansen and Stanisław Zamecznik. In 1958, together with Stanisław Zamecznik, he created an exhibition entitled “A Study of Space” in the New Culture Salon in Warsaw (it was the first artistic 'environment' ever created in Poland).
He received scholarships from the Institute for Contemporary Art in Washington, DC in 1962 and the Ford Foundation in West Berlin in 1964 - 1965. In 1965 - 1966, he taught at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, Wiltshire, England, and from 1966 - 1983, he led classes at Farleigh Dickinson University in Madison in the United States. In 1967 - 1968, he conducted guest lectures at the Faculty of Architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1970, he created sets for the Martha Graham Dance Company. In 1978, he received the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award, and in 2003, he was awarded The Minister of Culture of the Republic of Poland Award.
Immediately after the war, Wojciech Fangor created paintings that belong to the canon of socialist realist works of art, later co-founding the Polish School of Poster Art. In the period of 1953 - 1961, he designed about 100 posters and created numerous drawings for the Życie Warszawy daily. In his paintings, as well as in his poster art, he used similar artistic motifs, monumental and powerful forms that were synthetic and simplified. Sometimes the social realism subjects in his work took on elements of caricature (“Figures”, 1950).
At the beginning of the '50s, he started to work with architects such as Stanislaw Zamecznik, Oskar Hansen, Zbigniew Ichnatowicz, and Jerzy Sołtan. Stanisław Zamecznik instilled in Fangor an awareness of space as an artistic material. Together they created an exhibition entitled "A Study of Space" in 1958 which was an innovative artistic 'environment' composed of twenty 'optical' paintings by Fangor.
These paintings, as the artist himself says, resulted from an accidental discovery. Fangor wanted to paint two-dimensional pictures, i.e. where figurative marks were to be imposed on a background of unspecified forms of diffuse contours (faces, hands, etc.). After painting the background, the artist discovered that it had a strange effect on the space in front of the image; it changed and activated the space. An illusion of space was created, developing the image toward the viewer. The artist decided not to include the figurative elements, and later called his discovery a 'positive illusory space.'
“A Study of Space” consisted of 20 canvases of various formats. Only four of them hung on the walls, the rest were set on easels. The exhibition was not about individual paintings but about the relationships between them. By choosing a path between the paintings, the viewer became the co-author of a work that was not a closed structure, but an open system. “A Study of Space” was ahead of its time, a classic environment with all the properties that this type of art was to develop in the future. In addition to “A Study of Space”, Fangor and Zamecznik created two more exhibitions devoted to space: both in 1959, at the Stedelijk Museum and in front of the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw.
In 1966 the artist immigrated to the United States. He became a leading representative of the up-and-coming Op-art movement. In his work he focused on issues of color and light. Showing light, its spectrum, the chromatic effects of its separation became Fangor's primary aim in his paintings. He produced canvasses composed of colored circles and waves. With pulsating, vibrating contours, his forms generated an impression of movement and various optical illusions. The artist exhibited at some of the world's most famous and prestigious galleries and museums and lectured at a number of notable American universities and colleges.
His characteristic whirls and waves of vague, hazy edges, creating optical effects similar to those used in op-art dominated Fangor's work until the mid-70s. Fangor created images and spatial installations in which he used 'positive illusory space.' Fangor's wheels were a constant, multilateral experiment. In their arrangement he constantly tested in a new way the effects of brightness and muted colors, the degree of saturation and brightness of color, the ring size, larger and smaller width of the bands and their density or modesty of expression. The artist also used in his paintings all sorts of contrasts and the afterimage phenomena.
After several years traveling around Europe, Fangor settled in the United States. In 1970, he had a solo exhibition, the first Polish artist to have done so, at New York's Solomon Guggenheim Museum. There he showed 37 paintings, precursors to the western explorations of op-art.
In the mid-70s, the artist returned to figurative painting (interior space studies, the work of “Picture in Picture”). He also created a series of paintings based on television images, which used visual effects typical of this medium. In his 'television' paintings Fangor recreated the images from the TV screen in the form of an indiscriminate mass of color; a little like posters, and then he broke the image using small dots imitating electronic pixels, thereby generating a pointillistic quivering texture.
Since the mid-80s, Fangor has created paintings including fragments of scenes, characters and objects, which were often quotes from other images known from art history or repainted from illustrated magazines. When considering the incredibly diverse works of this artist, one cannot fail to notice that Fangor has never stopped thinking about space, treating it either as an area of physical sensations, or metaphorically. He died on October 25, 2015 in Warsaw, Poland.
Wojciech started in the Socialist realism manner, creating the “Korean Mother” (now in the National Museum, Warsaw collection). After the Polish October, the so-called "Gomułka's thaw" following Joseph Stalin's death, he turned away from socialist realism.
Wojciech Fangor adhered to the artistic traditions of Socialist Realism and Op Art.
Quotations: “A drawing is a basic and direct method of contacting with the world we see and study. Reality is intangible. Drawing helps grasp, record, and control it.”
Dissatisfied with painting as a propaganda medium, he became a founding member of the Polish Poster School, known for its bold, modernist design, and created hundreds of film posters.
In 1999, Mr. Fangor, who is survived by his wife, Magdalena Shummer-Fangor, returned to Poland, where he set up a studio in an old mill in Bledow, near Warsaw, and enjoyed a career resurgence.