oil / canvas
46 cm x 33 cm
sign. p.d.: Lenica
Alfred Lenica (1899-1977) - one of the most prominent Polish artists of the 20th century. He primarily practiced abstract painting. In his youth, he studied at the Faculty of Law and Economics at the University of Poznan and at the local Conservatory of Music. In addition, he also took classes at the Private Institute of Fine Arts. However, this was not his leading direction: until the outbreak of World War II, Lenica worked professionally as a violinist, practicing painting only in his spare time. His "hobby" work at the time was dominated by figurative paintings, mainly cubist-inspired still lifes. During the occupation, Lenica was resettled from Poznan to Krakow, where he became acquainted with the artistic milieu centered around Tadeusz Kantor, and became interested in the latest plastic trends. The meeting with Kantor determined the choice of contemporary art as a further career path for Lenica, who was already more than 40 years old at the time.
After returning to Poznan, Alfred Lenica actively joined in organizing the local artistic life. In 1947, together with Feliks M. Nowowiejski and Ildefons Houwalt, he founded the avant-garde group 4F + R - the acronym the artists developed as "form, paint, texture, fantasy + realism", and the manifesto they formulated proclaimed the postulate of referring to the latest achievements of world visual arts while building a socially engaged program. The group was open to formal explorations, and Lenica, who stood at the head of the group, reached in his work for such diverse sources of inspiration as informel, geometric abstraction, and was also involved in the official socialist realist trend. It wasn't until the second half of the 1950s that his recognizable style was formed, combining organic abstraction with influences of surrealism through an authorial technique using painting with elements of decalcomania.
Alfred Lenica's works can be found in the National Museum in Warsaw, Cracow, Poznan, Lodz, Szczecin and in many private collections in Poland and abroad.
