Born: November 5, 1928, Borownica, Poland.
Early days. At the beginning of World War II, Stanczak was forced into a Siberian labor camp, where he permanently lost the use of his right arm (he had been right-handed). In 1942, Stanczak (age 13) escaped from Siberia to join the Polish army-in-exile in Persia. After deserting from the army, he spent his teenage years in a hut in a Polish refugee camp in Uganda, Africa. It was in Africa that Stanczak learned to paint (left-handed). He moved to England and then the United States, where he eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. Stanczak received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1954, and trained under Josef Albers and Conrad Marca-Relli at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture, New Haven, Connecticut, where he received his Master of Fine Arts in 1956. In 2007, Stanczak was interviewed by Brian Sherwin for Myartspace. During the interview Stanczak recalled his experiences with war and the loss of his right arm and how both influenced his art. Stanczak explained, "The transition from using my left hand as my right, main hand, was very difficult. My youthful experiences with the atrocities of the Second World War are with me,- but I wanted to forget them and live a "normal" life and adapt into society more fully. In the search for Art, you have to separate what is emotional and what is logical. I did not want to be bombarded daily by the past,- I looked for anonymity of actions through non-referential, abstract art." The artist lives and works in Seven Hills, Ohio with his wife, the sculptor, Barbara Stanczak.
Works. Stanczak's first exhibition in New York was held in 1964 and was titled Julian Stanczak: Optical Paintings. His work was also included in the Museum of Modern Art's 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye. In 1966 Stanczak was named a "New Talent" by Art in America magazine. In the early 1960s he began to make the surface plane of the painting vibrate through his use of wavy lines and contrasting colors in works such as Provocative Current (1965). These paintings gave way to more complex compositions constructed with geometric rigidity yet softened with varying degrees of color transparency such as Netted Green (1972). In addition to being an artist, Stanczak was also a teacher, having worked at the Art Academy of Cincinnati from 1957-64 and as Professor of Painting, The Cleveland Institute of Art, 1964-1995. He was named "Outstanding American Educator" by the Educators of America in 1970.
Style. Stanczak uses repeating forms to create compositions that are manifestations of his visual experiences. In the 1980s and 1990s Stanczak retained his geometric structure and created compositions with bright or muted colors, often creating pieces in a series such as Soft Continuum. More recently, Stanczak has been creating large-scale series, consisting of square panels on which he examines variations of hue and chroma in illusionistic color modulations, an example of which is Windows to the Past (2000; 50 panels).
Public Collections. Auckland Art Museum, University of North Carolina; Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania; Asheville Museum of Art, Asheville, North Carolina; Ball State University Museum of Art, Muncie, Indiana; Baum Gallery of Art, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama; Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida; Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Canton Museum of Art, Canton, Ohio; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Centrum Sztuki Studio im Stanislawa I. Witkiewicza, Warsaw, Poland; Cleveland Artists Foundation, Lakewood, Ohio; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Herron Gallery, Herron School of Art/IUPUI, Indianapolis, Indiana; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, Connecticut; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, Michigan; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Kennedy Museum of Art, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio; Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida; Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, Louisiana; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Kendall Campus Art Gallery, Miami-Dade Community College, Miami, Florida; Miami University Art Museum, Oxford, Ohio; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee Wisconsin; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Naples Museum of Art, Naples, Florida; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; Oklahoma City Art Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California; Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Arizona; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Southbend, Indiana; Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, Ohio; Tamayo Museum, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico; University at Buffalo Art Gallery, SUNY-Buffalo, Buffalo, New York; The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Wake Forest University Fine Arts Gallery, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California; Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Source:
This article uses mostly material from the Wikipedia article "Julian Stanczak" licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. :
MyArtSpace (contains photos of some paintngs)
New York Times review
Artnet (Artworks for sale)
Return to home page:
Prominent Poles
