Henryk STAŻEWSKI (1894-1988), Relief, 1970s.

acrylic, fiberboard; 40.6 x 41.3 cm;
Signed on the reverse: H. Stażewski.

In the late 1960s, after a period of metal reliefs, Stażewski created compositionally very diverse reliefs on fiberboard, composed of colorful squares. In them he used pastel, slightly dimmed colors, characteristic of his palette. The presented relief seems to belong to this series of paintings. One can see on it the artist's typical way of laying down paint with a brush in a very thin layer.
(excerpt from an expert opinion)

"Stażewski's artistic stance derives from two philosophical traditions: rationalism and absolutism. Thanks to the first, art based on geometric-arithmetic laws was certain of the unlimited possibilities of rational cognition of the world. The second tradition determined the belief that aesthetics, in the course of its own development, aims at the absolute. Art is capable of grasping the entirety of the laws of the universe in a single rule."
("Stażewski Internationale," by Andrzej Turowski, in Henryk Stażewski. Economy of Thought, Warsaw, 2005, p. 47.)