193,5 x 100,0cm - pastel, beige paper pasted on board signed p.d.: 16 FS 78 [date with tied monogram].
On the reverse of the binding l.g. sticker of the gallery Aberbach Fine Art in New York with data of the work (incorrect title), below on the transverse pile of the binding mpis sticker with the title written by hand: #10 POLIFACJONIZMUS | 74'' x 37'' | 1978, next to it in marker: #10
Polyphacionism - a term of its own, invented by Franciszek Starowieyski to describe works in which he used the motif of multiplied faces. It was a joke on artistic "isms", or rather critics, trying to link his work with any of the directions in art. (He coined a similar term - etherealism, or escape to eternity - for his Drawing Theater when asked about his style.) I am not a grafic-designer - I am a painter who took up posters, at a time when it made no sense to practice painting in Poland. [...] I am the one who introduces new symbols. I process each subject until nothing is left of the story - but then the abstract of meaning emerges. I am completely uninterested in being modern.
Multiplied, crowded faces as a compositional element have appeared in Starowieyski's poster art since the late 1970s (including Portrait of Dorian Gray, 1978, Prove d'autore, 1979, Krzysztof Gierałtowski, 1983). At the same time, he used the motif in compositions unrelated to posters, shown, among others, at New York's Aberbach Gallery (where he had several exhibitions). 1980 [...] It was an eventful year. At the same time that Franek created the first Drawing Theater, his exhibition of huge pastels and charcoal drawings opened in New York at the Aberbach Gallery on Madison Avenue, near one of the world's two largest auction houses, Sotheby's. Frank went to its opening. Perhaps the work on offer was exhibited at this exhibition.
The effect of "polyphony" recurred in Franek Starowieyski's work in painting compositions from later years. One of them (with a portrait of Kiejstut Bereźnicki and other people from the plein air circle at the Reszel Castle) is in the collection of the Museum of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, another, from 1988, appeared on the antiquarian market under the title Polyfacionism.
In general, the accumulation and crowding of multiplied faces and other fragments of the human body - eyes, limbs, whole figures captured in improbable abbreviations, but always anatomically flawless - is among the most frequently repeated characteristics of Franciszek Starowieyski's individual style, a kind of "signature" of the artist.
(Quotes are from Izabela Górnicka-Zdziech, Franciszek Starowieyski, Bycza krew, Prószyński i S-ka, Warsaw 2016.)
♣ a fee will be added to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, based on the right of the author and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)
Franciszek Starowieyski (Bratkówka near Krosno 8 July 1930 - Warsaw 23 II 2009), using the pseudonym Jan Byk, studied from 1949 to 1952 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Prof. Wojciech Weiss , after which he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, receiving his diploma in the studio of Prof. Michał Bylina in 1955. In the 1960s and 1970s, he gained the greatest recognition as a poster designer, in which he quickly rivaled the coryphaeuses of this art in Poland. He cultivated a poster of the author's type, with a recognizable style based on sweeping and at the same time calligraphic drawing, and above all surprising, surreal associations. From 1964 he was the art director of the fashionable monthly magazine "You and Me." With time, the predominance in his achievements gained "pure" drawing, since 1980 often presented in the form of dynamic sessions of the so-called "Theater of Drawing", with the participation of models, audience and the artist himself, fulfilling in it the role of demiurge. He created many painting and drawing compositions emanating a surreal atmosphere of life on the verge of physical decay, being a contemporary version of the vanitas theme. Fascinated by Baroque culture, the artist has been anti-dating all his works by 300 years since 1970. The artist was the recipient of numerous awards, which he won at such exhibitions as the Sao Paulo Art Biennale 1973, the International Film Poster Exhibition, Cannes 1974, the "Annual Key Award", Los Angeles 1978, among others. He was in New York on several occasions at the invitation of the Kosciuszko Foundation. In 1980 he was a professor at the Berliner Hochschule der Künste, in the 1990s he taught at the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw.
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