17.5 x 22.5 cm - dimensions in st. passe-partout
Signed in ink l.d.: Lebenstein 81 Grand Canyon
On the reverse of the binding stickers:
- l.g. transport sticker of the French company Art Transit S.A. for an exhibition at Zachęta, with details of the work rkps
- p.g. rkps in pen: Lebenstein | "Grand Canyon" | 1981 | encre et pastel | 18 x 23 cm, below sticker with flam. number: 7 A
- p.d. CBWA Zachęta exhibition sticker with details of the work and cat. no. 117, crossed out and added below: 109
Work exhibited at the artist's first retrospective in Poland after 1989:
- Jan Lebenstein, Zachęta Gallery, Warsaw IV-V 1992, cat. list on loose insert.
The series with the Grand Canyon in the USA from 1981 (and views of the Diablerets Glacier in the Bernese Alps from 1983) are few in Lebenstein's mature oeuvre of purely landscape representations. They are preceded only by paintings from the period of his studies and just after, in which, incidentally, the leading role is played by small-town or suburban architecture. Apart from these exceptional groups of works, landscape in Jan Lebenstein's art appears only as a setting or background for figural compositions.
Jan Lebenstein (Brest Litovsk 1930 - Krakow 1999) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1948 to 1954 under Prof. Eugeniusz Eibisch and Artur Nacht-Samborski. In 1955 he took part in an exhibition at the Warsaw Arsenal. A friend of Miron Białoszewski during his studies, he showed his first solo exhibition in 1956 at the Tarczynska Theater. In 1959, he won the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris at the First Biennale of the Young in Paris, and moved to Paris permanently that year. After the series of "drawn figures" (on millimeter paper) and "hieratic figures" from 1955-1958, he paints a series of "axial figures" (1958-1962), which he exhibits in Paris and the USA. At the same time, in 1960, he starts drawing "carnets," a kind of diary, which in the future will provide the motifs used in the paintings. In 1964-1965 he paints "Bestiary," a series of textured, archaic creatures reminiscent of prehistoric excavations. Immediately after, he introduces human and fantastic figures into his paintings, acting out scenes neither mythological nor from a dream, often imbued with eroticism. In 1970, he designs stained glass windows for the Centre du Dialogue in Paris. In 1971 receives French citizenship 1974 creates gouaches inspired by George Orwell's Animal Farm. In 1976-1989, he creates exclusively in gouache and pastel, taking up mythological themes and those drawn from the Bible: series of illustrations to the Book of Job (published in 1979) and the Apocalypse (published in 1986) in new translations by Czeslaw Milosz. In 1989 he returns to oil painting (series "Pergamon"). The artist received, among others, the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award in 1976, the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum Award in 1985, the Jan Cybis Award in 1987.