Jerzy Stajuda (1936-1992), COMPOSITION 0612

watercolor/paper, 29.5 x 42 cm
circular stamp on back: JERZY STAJUDA | FECIT, l.d.: no. 0612

Studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology, graduating in 1959. He practiced drawing and painting. In 1957-1968 he was engaged in art criticism, publishing in professional and popular press: "Przegląd Artystyczny", "Przegląd Kulturalny", "Miesięcznik Literacki", "Ty i Ja", "Więź", "Współczesność". In 1968 he ended his activities as a critic, devoting himself to his own work. In 1990-1992 he taught drawing at the Department of Sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. In 1992, the Jerzy Stajuda Art Criticism Award was established.

The artist's abstract paintings and drawings depict undefined worlds, evoking associations with landscape but at the same time with automatic writing. Tadeusz Nyczek connected the monochromatism of Stajuda's works with the monochromatic range in music, of which the artist was an expert and enthusiast: "Perhaps Stajuda is the only authentic music painter (not music painter!) I know, at least in Poland" (T. Nyczek, Last Light, [in:] Jerzy Stajuda. Painting, Drawing [exhibition catalogue], Inny Świat Gallery, April-May 1990, Cracow 1990). In the catalog of his 1988 exhibition, Stajuda, in the text "Some answers to the questions of X., who was supposed to write the introduction to the catalog, but didn't make it," the author himself explained some of the issues bothering viewers: The white spots in the paintings have a simple structural meaning. But, notice, those deepest open parts of the painting are the bare surface of the ground. This ambiguity is important to me. Interpret. If you would prefer in literary terms - I would not be uncomfortable quoting Arrabal's phrase: "I also perceive immaterial beings, they are similar to flying paper handkerchiefs (Kleenex) [...]Where you see a landscape, describe the landscape. Don't be shy. Even Ben Nicholson, my beloved painter, is not without sin. My master Nacht-Samborski was fond of, and without malice, searching out in abstract paintings a certain chair, and again, as my previous master, T.B., expressed it, a certain "smiley face." [...]

I am interested in hypnagogic images" (those that go under the eyelids in a state of semi-sleep, and if one is lucky, also on waking). St. I. W. called them "hypnagogues" [...]. In the last century a certain Marquis Hervey de Saint-Denis studied them [...]. He tried to take notes - these are remarkably early examples of abstract art. Unfortunately, he was not capable. Anyway, this is impossible to note down, it is very peculiar, has perhaps some connection not so much with cinematography, but with musical thinking. The important thing is that these images" belong to the world of the senses. [...] Music is important to me. Maybe more important than painting; that's why I never made a conscious attempt to flan. [...]". ([in:] Jerzy Stajuda. Paintings, watercolors, drawings [exhibition cat.], Museum of Art in Lodz, December 1988, Lodz 1988)