acrylic / canvas
80 x 60 cm
signed l.d.: TP.
signed, dated and described on the reverse l.g.: TERESA PĄGOWSKA | NOGI | 1992
"Teresa Pągowska's paintings deepen our faith in the meaning of art. Her immense passion and talent mean that when we encounter her paintings, we cannot be indifferent. Teresa Pągowska's paintings are an affirmation of life, showing the beauty of the human body and the drama of our fate. It forces us to reflect on the transience of life, showing its full vitality and hope, up to the inevitable limit of existence." - wrote Adam Myjak, sculptor and illustrator, about Teresa Pągowska
Warsaw-born Teresa Pągowska is one of the most outstanding Polish painters of the 20th century. She studied at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznań, in the studios of Prof. Wacław Taranczewski and Prof. Stanisław Szczepański. She was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She practiced painting, drawing and related forms. Her works can be found, among others, in the collections of the National Museums in Gdansk, Kielce, Krakow, Poznan, Warsaw, the Museum of Art in Lodz, as well as numerous private collections at home and abroad. Teresa Pągowska's work has been recognized as a unique phenomenon in contemporary Polish art.
Her work was formed in the second half of the 1950s. During the triumph of abstraction, she painted the human figure, which forever dominated her painting. In the 1960s she found a place in the trend of the so-called new figuration. Her treatment of the figure not only became very important to her work, but also became the basis of Poland's new figuration, which became part of the canon of European painting. Her painting, based on the basis of colorism, abstraction, operates with abbreviation and silhouetted stain, treated quite sketchily, with deformed shapes. The figures give the impression of specters, immaterial, colorful bodily prototypes. The paintings are characterized by a color range limited to a few, contrastingly juxtaposed, intense colors, referring to the expressive message of ambiguous content. The figure of a woman constantly recurs in the paintings, shown in various situations, placed in conventionally treated interiors, shown emotionally, often intimately. Pągowska's nudes reveal the simplest truths; they convey emotions and various mental states. We discover body and matter, its density and taste, dynamics and color. She was more concerned with creating the atmosphere, expressive power and dynamics of the whole performance than with saying something literally.
The 1990s gave birth to many surprising works that defined the classical phase of her work. The compositions are constructed with lightness, filled with patches of luminous colors, decorative, full of charm and poetic humor. In these works the artist's conviction is most fully realized:
"It is necessary to see a lot in order to discard a lot, through elimination to gain more richness, and formal abbreviation is to serve the clarity of expression and increase the power of the image. To constantly search for one's own self and fight with the happiness that is painting."
Pągowska's painting, devoid of literalism and pathos, understated, speaking about human life through images of everyday life, is perhaps best summarized by Jerzy Tchórzewski, who calls it "simplicity, which is not poverty, but condensed richness."
