Roman Artymowski (1919-1993), SOUTH X, 1970.

watercolor, collage/paper on cardboard, 40 x 40 cm
signed, dated and described on the back: South X, 1970 | aqu. coll. | 40 x 40 | in circle no. 157

In 1949 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under the direction of Professor Eugeniusz Eibisch. In 1950, following Eibisch, he moved to the Warsaw academy, where he became the professor's assistant. The artist went through a stage of informel painting, experimenting with techniques, creating, among other things, encaustic "Italian Landscapes." These were fully abstract compositions, only by their titles referring to the outside world. In 1959 he traveled to Baghdad for the first time, where he taught printmaking techniques. Contact with the Middle Eastern landscape resulted in a new formula for capturing the landscape. The painter began to change the convention to one closer to geometric abstraction. However, Artymowski emphasized: "I do not want geometry to become a kind of corset, restraining the imagination too much, and although in recent years I have based many of my works on elements of the circle and square, color, space and mood have a primary meaning for me." From his observations of the Middle Eastern landscape, the artist drew insights that explain the iconography of his works: "With us the sun is a joy - there the most dangerous enemy. Everything hides from the sun [...] Iraq is generally flat, in the desert everything happens on the horizon line, the desert increases the scale of every object - by the lack of contrast." The painter limited himself to depicting the sun and the horizon. This is clearly evident in the works with landscape in the title - rectangular paintings in which the belt at the bottom of the composition marks the horizon, while the circle/sphere (sometimes the figure is surrounded by a line, at other times the shading gives convexity), evokes an unambiguous association with the disc of the sun.

The presented composition shows a circle inscribed in a square. The sublime vision loses its connection with physical reality, the association with the landscape weakens, the horizon line disappears. Both composition and color gain a symbolic dimension: "My works are usually landscapes, or rather memories of places and moods, which I try to put as simply as possible. In fact, they border on a sign, or have the meaning of a symbol."