oil, canvas, 69.5 x 53 cm
EXHIBITED:
- Lviv, National Museum, Jonasz Stern (1904-1988) Return to Lviv. Landscape of Silence, 2008
- Sopot, State Art Gallery, Stern's Centennial. Works by Jonasz Stern (1904-1988) from the 1930s and 1940s, 7.04-29.05.2005.
- Poznań, Zamek Cultural Center, Around the Cracow Group: paintings and works on paper, 22.04-31.05.2001.
LITERATURE:
- Jonasz Stern. Return to Lviv. Landscape of Silence [exhibition catalog], National Museum in Lviv, 2008, p. 24 (ill.), cat. no. 19.
- Stern's Centennial. Works by Jonasz Stern (1904-1988) from the 1930s and 1940s [exhibition catalog] State Art Gallery in Sopot, Sopot, 2005, p. 16 (il.), item cat. 18.
- Around the Cracow Group: painting and works on paper [exhibition catalog], ed. Przygońska J., Zamek Cultural Center in Poznań, Poznań 2001, p. 8 (ill.).
Painter, graphic artist and educator of Jewish descent. Initially, he took painting lessons at a private school in Lviv and in Cracow with Ludwika Mehofferowa, and then continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts there. He was a co-founder of the so-called First Cracow Group, and after the war was twice president of the Second Cracow Group. The artist's work was strongly shaped by politics and wartime experiences, and he did not take over the artistic formula from his student teachers-Frederick Pautsch, Teodor Axentowicz and Wladyslaw Jarocki, and was closer to the restless spirit of the avant-garde. The artist's oeuvre can be divided into two main chapters: the pre-war period, in which there was a clear
influence of German Expressionism and Cubism, and the post-war period, which abounded in formal experiments (matter painting, "biological abstraction"), where the key role was played by combining traditional mediums with unusual ones, such as organic remains of animals, and everything was encircled by a net of symbolic meanings with a vanitative meaning.
