Ryszard GRZYB (b. 1956), Man and Angel, 1984

tempera on paper; 100 x 130 cm;
signed, dated, and inscribed on the reverse: RYSZARD GRZYB / 1984 / "MAN AND ANGEL".

Ryszard Grzyb graduated in 1981 from Rajmund Ziemski’s studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He was a co-founder of the Gruppa art collective (1982–1992). He is a representative of Neo-Expressionism. In addition to painting, he works in graphic design and is also a poet. The presented work, “Man and Angel,” comes from his so-called “paper phase”—compositions almost always executed in tempera, full of movement and “struggle.” The absurd tone characteristic of this composition also appears in the artist’s later paintings, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Ryszard Grzyb returned to traditional techniques—oil painting. It was then that increasingly bold color combinations began to appear, evolving in subsequent years into contrasting hues and animal motifs: rhinos, rabbits, and turtles.
As Dorota Jarecka writes: “In 1987, Grzyb’s painting lost its tremendous momentum. It returned to its previous state—one of balance and concentration. The compositions became more compact, depicting fewer and fewer events and more and more individual figures and symbols, which, suspended in empty space, resembled totems, mascots, or masks. His painting was reduced to a mask. It approaches metaphysics. It is as if an increasingly pure, increasingly clear form allows for the posing of increasingly clear questions.”