Alfred LENICA (1899-1977), They delude themselves, after 1960

collage, oil, cardboard; 72 x 54.5 cm;
Signed p. d.: Lenica;
Signed, dated and described on the back: A.LENICA / 1960-70 / They delude themselves.

Image reproduced in the catalog: Alfred Lenica. Painting, Municipal Gallery ARSENA³ 2002, p. 123.

Alfred Lenica is a versatile artist, musician and painter, with an extensive circle of friends. He lived in Poznan, Krakow and Warsaw. In Poznan, together with Feliks M. Nowowiejski, he founded the artistic group 4F+R (Form, Paint, Texture, Fantastics+Realism). In Krakow, he took part in the First Exhibition of Modern Art in 1948 and was eventually the only Varsovian to be admitted to the Krakow Group. This occasion also marked his monographic exhibition at Krzysztofory in March 1965. After settling in Warsaw in 1974, the painter's canvases were presented in a solo exhibition of the artist at Warsaw's Zachęta Gallery. Anna Budzałek of the National Museum in Cracow characterizes his work in the following way: "From 1955, Alfred Lenica's painting style finally clarified, which would accompany him until his death. This style was a combination of Tashism, Surrealism, Informel and Dripping. At the time, large-format oil paintings were created, painted using a technique developed earlier by the artist (getting color translucence from under successive layers of paint), which he later perfected and developed. Lenica readily used varnishes and industrial paints. The artist often stressed that his main aspiration was to find expression in painting for experiences and emotions that are most elusive and difficult to define. He saw in this the similarity between painting and music, which was also his lifelong passion. The key to understanding Lenica's painting of the 1960s is found primarily in a kind of biologism." Other critics, recipients of Alfred Lenica's works, had similar biological associations, including Bożena Kowalska and Janusz Bogusławski after the aforementioned exhibition in Warsaw's Zachęta Gallery. On the other hand, the artist himself wrote in the catalog for the exhibition at Krzysztofory: "Whether art as a biological engine of life as religion as a social and political function in the conditions of modern civilization is right to exist I do not know I paint because I would like to know."

(Source:https://mnk.pl/aktualnosci/grupa-krakowska-alfred-lenica;
https://www.muzeumkrakowa.pl/wystawy/lenica-krzysztofory-1965-obrazy-lenicy-i-zdjecia-stoklosy).