Władysław Anatol - Polish abstractionist and concretist

He has come a long way artistically and some of his works are reminiscent of those of Marc Chagall. Władysław Anatol is an artist whose works are difficult to pigeonhole. What is certain is that they are intriguing and not easily forgotten. In this article, we attempt to outline the profile of this exceptional painter.

Władysław Anatol (1913-2004 ) - Brazilian painter and graphic artist, from a family of Polish Jews . One of the progenitors of abstract art in South America. When he was 17, he moved to São Paulo, where he prepared to become an engineer. It was not until he graduated in electrical engineering that he began to study art, under the tutelage of Samson Flexor and Lucy Citti Ferreira.

In the mid-1940s, Anatol created figural paintings and his first exhibition in the aforementioned São Paulo took place then - dominated by landscapes with strong colour contrasts. From 1950, he concentrated exclusively on creating abstract-geometric works , among which orthagonal compositions predominated.

Władysław Anatol was a co-founder of the Ruptura group , and was considered its least 'austere' representative. Artists such as Waldemar Cordeiro, Luiz Sacilotto, Kazmer Fejer and Lothar Charoux also belonged to this group - one could say that they initiated Brazilian concretism and strived for a direct relationship with reality. In their view, only visual elements such as lines, shapes and colours can be considered real, because they do not imitate reality , they are only themselves. Until the end of his life, however, the artist refused to identify himself with any form of thinking about art.

From the 1960s onwards, the artist returned to figuration , and his works from this period are characterised by great formal simplification. In 1961 he was awarded a prize at the Ninth Art Biennale and from then on he turned towards organic forms , rejecting the concretism that had shaped him. One can notice fanciful and oneiric motifs in his works from this period, constructed from characters appearing in myths.