JULIAN STANCZAK | SHARING IN ORANGE

Martha Jackson Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner in February 1971

“One of the leading exponents of Op art even before a 1964 review by Donald Judd gave the movement its name, … [Julian] Stanczak’s ongoing engagement with Op is particularly compelling… In 1940, at the age of eleven, Stanczak was interred for two years, along with his family, in a Russian labor camp in Siberia reserved for Polish prisoners, where he lost the use of his right arm following a severe beating by a Russian soldier. The right-handed Stanczak learned to use his left, and then, a few years in the wake of this ordeal, began to paint. By the early 1960s, he was producing technically scrupulous canvases, whose formal success is entirely contingent upon the precision of their execution. It is thus more than tempting to see in the works’ sheer flawlessness a statement of obstinate persistence, even defiance, reiterated again and again. […]

The application of pigment is uniformly impeccable—crisp and sharp—and it is easy to imagine how glaring any imprecision would be. Indeed, Stanczak’s choice of materials is utterly unforgiving: The acrylic paint, sitting atop an unyielding, nonabsorbent surface, seems to present itself for inspection. It is as if Stanczak sets the stakes high in order to emphasize his uncompromising commitment to craft, to make his labor not some hidden process but rather the very subject of his work… The high-key fluorescent lines and narrow passages… vibrate and quiver with such agitation, assaulting the eyes so unremittingly, that the experience of viewing shades from optic stimulation to something more like haptic disturbance… His paintings seem literally alive on the wall, attracting and repelling the eye, and resisting passive designations such as ‘beautiful’ despite their sharp execution and seductive palette.” 

(Christopher Bedford on Julian Stanczak: MoCA Cleveland, Artforum, December 2009, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 239-240)