Wojciech Fangor is one of the most recognisable Polish artists working in the 20th century. The history of his art includes several fascinating artistic turns. His works entered the canon of socialist realist art, the 1958 study of space prepared together with Zamecznik was a precursor of similar activities undertaken in world art. He became permanently inscribed in the history of Polish poster art as one of the main figures of the so-called Polish poster school. However, it was his individual exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 1970 that proved in itself the position he had gained in New York art as one of the forerunners of op art. However, he became interested in dynamic compositions leading to op art earlier, as early as the beginning of the 1960s. In 1965, he was invited to participate in one of the most important exhibitions of this direction, "The Responsive Eye". It was shown at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and curated by William C. Seitz. Two other artists with links to Poland participated in this exhibition - Julian Stanczak and Richard Anuszkiewicz It was visited by over 180,000 and was a great success. It is considered the beginning of American op art.
The artist's artistic debut was an exhibition shown in 1949, at the dawn of socialist realism he showed paintings with clear cubist influences. However, Socialist Realism turned his art in a different direction. Among the works from this period, 'Mother Korean' and 'Figures' have a special place. Not only some of the better works of the period, but also through ambiguous contexts that raise doubts, which seem to grow in the self-ironic painting, dating as early as 1953, showing the Palace of Culture and Science being carried in, which at first appears inverted. Moving away from socialist realism, he sought - like many others - a safe space in the poster. And indeed his poster for René Clément's 1952 film The Walls of Malapaga won him an award at the National Poster Exhibition. In 1958, together with Stanisław Zamecznik, they prepared the spatial installation 'Study of Space' in the now-defunct salon of 'Nowa Kultura', discovering how dispersed backgrounds allow the construction of dynamic space images. The artists ultimately did not treat them as independent compositions, but proposed a kind of environment . The 20 canvases arranged in the room created complex spatial relationships creating a kind of open work. The artists showed another exhibition dedicated to the study of space at the Stedelijk Museum in 1959.
In 1961, Wojciech Fangor decided to leave Poland. Initially to Vienna, and from there to the USA in 1962 as a fellow at The Institute of Contemporary Arts. He then briefly returned to Europe as a result of receiving a Ford scholarship in West Berlin, and then to Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, England, for a year. Eventually, however, he moved to the USA in 1966. He taught at Farleigh Dickinson University, Madison, N.J. (1966-1983) and the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1967-1968), among others. Although his op art paintings brought him his greatest fame, the mid-1970s saw another turn in his work. The artist turned to so-called television paintings, which he painted until around 1984. Abstraction was again replaced by figuration, or rather a variety of images, including television images, of contemporary culture. Above all, he is fascinated by the media structure of the image, but also by its wider cultural context. He seems to take a critical approach to it. Although not without fascination, but one that critically approaches the medium, sensing its banality. The artist stayed in the USA until 1999 when he decided to return to Poland. He then settled near Warsaw. In 2014, a year before his death, he designed a series of murals for the Warsaw metro. His paintings can be found in many museum collections and private collections around the world, including
Mf, 1969, El Museo del Barrio
Number 17, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York (the painting was shown at the exhibition The Responsive Eye , 1965,
Untitled, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
M63 at the Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), San Francisco
M5-1969' at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh
'M 48' at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
M39" at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago

1970

Wojciech Fangor

Bartłomiej Gutowski