Tadeusz Dominik, COMPOSITION, 1962

99 x 89 cm - oil on canvas

This painting was created during a significant period in Tadeusz Dominik’s career, spanning 1961–1962. It was a time when the artist was in the United States on a prestigious Ford Foundation fellowship. During the same period (1961), the legendary exhibition “15 Polish Painters” took place at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, in which Dominik participated.
The curator of that exhibition, Peter Selz, wrote in the exhibition catalog at the time: [Dominik] works largely intuitively, painting with vivid, unrestrained brushstrokes. He also emphasized that, in contrast to many of his contemporary Polish painters working in a dark, monochromatic palette, Dominik emerged as a true master of color, whose style was closest to the international style of expressive abstractionism.
The canvas on offer perfectly illustrates these characteristics. The paint is applied here with decisive brushstrokes, and the patches of color are spread out broadly, with boldness and energy, which enhances the composition’s internal dynamism.
Although the structure of the work is close to pure abstraction, it resonates with strong connections to nature, which for Dominik was an inexhaustible source of inspiration and wonder. The artist did not so much reproduce specific forms of nature as he did capture its constant activity, its changeability, and its physical process of transformation. The landscapes and motifs he painted were always filtered through his personal sensibility and transposed onto the canvas as fleeting impressions created in his imagination. The painting on display dates from the peak of the artist’s creative career.


♣ Droit de suite: ♣ A fee resulting from the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994, on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite) will be added to the Purchase Price.
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Tadeusz Dominik (Szymanów, January 14, 1928 – Warsaw, May 20, 2014) studied at the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw under the supervision of Prof. J. Cybis (1946–51; graduated in 1953). From 1951, he taught at his alma mater, initially as Cybis’s assistant. From 1965, he led his own studio, and in 1979 he was awarded the title of professor. He retired in 1990. During his studies, he was influenced—through Cybis’s personality and art—by the ideas of Polish Colorism, which he subsequently developed creatively and independently. Initially, he created figurative paintings. He made his debut at the famous exhibition at the Arsenal in Warsaw in 1955, where he won an award. During this period, in addition to painting, he practiced woodcut, using broad swaths of white and black (he exhibited his woodcuts, among other places, at the Venice Biennale in 1956). In the second half of the 1950s, he began painting abstract works, initially in the expressive and spontaneous style of Informel painting. In the 1960s, he enriched his works with textural effects. Nature—and the richness and color palette of its forms—remained a constant source of inspiration for the painter. He has remained faithful to it to this day, while evolving his painting technique. He gradually lightened and smoothed out his compositions, introducing decorative effects such as rhythmic repetitions of forms or a kind of painted “grids” that regularly delineate fragments of the composition. Among his many awards, he received, among others, the “Golden Grape” prize in Zielona Góra in 1963, the Grand Prix at the Festival of Polish Contemporary Painting in Szczecin in 1968, the George Rowney Prize in London in 1973, and the Jan Cybis Prize in Warsaw in 1973. In addition to painting, he worked with tapestry, ceramics, and computer graphics.
He died on May 20, 2014, at his home near Warsaw.