A perfectly preserved work by Ledwos, oil on panel:23x 32 cm,1980s.
Ryszard Ledwos was born in 1926 and died in 2007. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. He defended his diploma in 1950.From the 1950s he was associated with the artistic community of Nowa Huta, from the 1970s, for more than 30 years he worked with the Nowa Huta "Rhythm" Gallery.
The painting of Ryszard Ledwos is extremely diverse.Tworzył w technice olejnej, jednak dzięki zastosowaniu różnych podobrazi malarskich (np. płyta) uzyskiwał odmienne faktury, które wywoływały różnorodne efekty plastyczne.
Artysta tworzył zarówno dzieła abstrakcyjne, jak i oparte na figuracji. The subject matter of his works is mostly related to his place of residence, Nowa Huta. Here he created landscapes, urban views, scenes depicting workers at work, painted in a style with strong echoes of socialist realism.Richard Ledwos painted these types of paintings with strong but regular brushstrokes, strongly emphasizing the dark contours and distribution of light, the latter with clearly bleached colors.
The artist also created abstract paintings, in which the influence of Cubism is evident.The forms used by the painter are strongly geometrized, harmonious in color. Theaesthetics of cubism, combined with the influence of post-impressionist art, is also repeated in the artist's rarely painted portraits.
A completelydifferent atmosphere is characterized by his still lifes, which feature subtly finished objects with delicately blurred borders.An example of this type of work by Richard Ledwos is the composition "Flowers". The artist has depicted a brownish vase with a bouquet of scarlet and amber flowers laid on a table covered with a patterned burgundy tablecloth. The background of the painting is a uniform, flat dark reddish-brown stain, closed from the left by a strip of dark green correlating with the color of the bouquet's leaves. The work is maintained in a dim, narrow, harmonious range of colors, its expression focusing precisely on color.It is painted in an extremely subtle way, with a thin layer of paint, using a rhythmic structure of the subpainting (panel).
The artist belonged to the Association of Polish Artists, in addition, he has exhibited his works at numerous group exhibitions, including. At the International Triennial of Drawing (1968) and the Festival of Polish Contemporary Painting (1962, 1964, 1966, 1972), the Nowa Huta Salon of Art (1999) and the exhibition Generations-Artists of Nowa Huta (2004).
The works of Ryszard Ledwos are in the collections of the National Museum in Cracow, the Cyprian Kamil Norwid Cultural Center in Cracow and in many private collections, among others.
