Jaroslaw Modzelewski, ULE, 2000

21.0 x 29.6cm - pencil, paper

sign. p.d.: JModzelewski 2000

Jaroslaw Modzelewski (Warsaw 1955, lives in Warsaw) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1975 to 1980, graduating in the studio of Stefan Gierowski. Since 1982, he has worked as a teacher at his alma mater. In 1982 he was a co-founder of "Gruppa", the most important grouping of the new expression trend of the 1980s, active until 1992. In 1991-1996, together with Marek Sobczyk, he ran a private School of Art in Warsaw. He has collaborated with Zderzak Gallery in Cracow for many years. In his early works, he leaned towards abstraction, using simplified signs and emblems and silhouettes reflected from a stencil. In 1985 he painted a series based on illustrations for Russian language textbooks, depicting simple activities, the verb phrases of which are the titles of the works. In 1986-1989 he created paintings maintained in the convention of realism, but at the same time with a surreal atmosphere achieved through various methods, such as duplicating figures, showing figures in a situation of uncertainty or danger, treatments with space. In a group of paintings from 1988, the artist abandons the human figure in favor of a unique emotional saturation of the very space of landscapes and interiors. Around 1990, he returns to compositions that accentuate the activities performed by the figures, which are often placed in an empty, merely suggested, yet dominant space. The flat and sweeping layering of color adds a touch of the unreal and monumental to these paintings.