11 Julian Stanczak (1928 - 2017) "Fragments of shadow," 1966 acrylic/canvas, 114 x 132 cm Signed and dated on the reverse: 'Julian Stańczak - 1966& Signed and described on the stretcher: 'JULIAN TANCZAK "FRAGMENTS OF SHADOW" ID: 182046 Taxes and fees - In addition to the hammer price, the successful bidder agrees to pay us a buyer's premium on the hammer prices of each lot sold. On all lots we charge 20 % of the hammer price. - To this lot we apply 'artist&s owe right' (&#xx27;droit de suite&#xi27;) fee. Royalties are calculated using a sliding scale of percentage of the hammer price. Provenance James H. Stone collection private collection Wright, United States, 2017 institutional collection, Poland Desa Unicum, 2019 institutional collection, Poland More information FRAGMENTS OF SHADOW Julian Stańczak is referred to as the leading representative of the art focusing on geometric optical illusions obtained by appropriate selection of colours and shapes. Op-art, as is currently called this direction in the play, received its name from the Optic Painting show by Julian Stańczak, which was organized in 1964 by Martha Jackson's New York Marshal. She was impressed by the artist's work, which was strongly distinguished by its smoothness against the background of then dominant abstract expressionism. The exhibition was the beginning of the artist's great international career. On it were presented the latest works of the painter based primarily on the rhythm of horizontal and vertical stripes in which vibrating color contrasts were arranged. The exhibition not only gave name to the direction, but also made Julian Stańczak a precursor of the op-art current. When creating geometric abstraction, the artist was inspired by nature and its landscapes, as well as by his own experiences, for this reason he was opposed to viewing his work as purely formal solutions based on creating illusions. The paintings were created as a sum of the experiences of the time, as well as of the earlier experiences marked by innumerable travels. Before the artist moved to the United States, where he achieved undeniable success, as a teenager, he was deported to Siberia during World War II. As a result of the events described, he lost power in his right hand. War events marked the artist and influenced his art to a large extent. It was only in 1942 that Stańczak and his family went south after gaining his amnesty. During the trip he visited among others. Pakistan or India. He was then placed in a camp for Polish refugees in Uganda. The landscapes there, and above all the colors of nature, had a significant impact on the artist's later painting work. Geometric abstraction was a relief for the artist and a detachment from the past. The artist himself said about the genesis of his art: "My youthful experiences associated with the atrocities of war are with me but I wanted to forget them, tell normal life and fully adapt to society. I didn't want to be bombarded every day by the past in anti-reference art, abstract, looking for the anonymity of human acts. Julian Stańczak addressed the issue of black and white in his work in the 1960s. This was a period of particular emphasis on exploring the potential of using and combining these two colours. The significant fact is that it was the fascination with the shadow and the attempt to capture it on its canvas that made the artist choose these two colours. One such project, in which the creator painted pictures with a reduced colour range and studied formal layouts and interactions of shapes, was the work "Walking Shadows" from 1962. This image is the first attempt taken by the artist to give such a fleeting phenomenon as shadow, as well as his wandering, depending on the location of the object in front of the light. A similar theme became the pretext for the auction of the work of Shadow from 1966. As Marta Smolinska describes the works in this series: Stanczak has chosen [so] an extremely difficult theme and has also set himself the goal of putting a shadow in motion or a shadow movement. We do not know what this shadow casts, it is him, this negative being, who becomes the main and only hero of the work. One of the researchers in the tradition of shadow painting in Western European painting emphasizes that while the shadow is actually unstable and volatile, it becomes stable and solid in the work of art. However, the author of the painting Walking Shadows tries to break out of this principle and show the title motive to make it seem moved and strive for an optical change of his position (Marta Smolinska, Julian Stańczak. Op art and dynamics of perception, Warsaw 2014, p. 73).