WHERE: Akron Art Museum.
WHEN: On view through November 3, 2013.
TITLE: Line Color Illusion: 40 Years of Julian Stanczak
BRIEF ABOUT: This exhibit invites viewers to immerse themselves in the Stanczak color experiences as well as offers both visual and understanding of some of the many themes and ideas the artist has explored throughout his career. His paintings and screenprints project his immense energy and depth of creative inquiry.
Born in Borownica, Poland during World War II, Stanczak (www.julianstanszak.net) was imprisoned in a Siberian concentration camp, where his dreams of becoming a cellist were dashed when he lost the use of his right arm. He later learned how to draw with his left hand as a refugee in Uganda and after the war attended art classes in London and at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Artist Stanczak began by applying the color on the outside squares and worked his way in from the edges to the center.
Next, he articulated the “windows” or “frames,” again slowly modifying the colors inward from the exterior.
His final step in creating the glowing canvas was to paint the top small squares.
Stanczak notes that he intends his centralized compositions as invitations to his viewers, yet offers few pathways for the eye to follow.
While the “eye and the brain always demand a point of rest,” he “gives the viewer everything at once.” The visual overload and inability of the eye to focus on one area induces the optical phenomenon of the pulsating “X” that emerges at the center of the canvas.
From there Stanczak enrolled as a graduate student at Yale University, where he studied with the celebrated master of color, Josef Albers. After earning his MFA, he began teaching at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and in 1964 his solo exhibition at the Dayton Art Institute was visited by Martha Jackson, who arranged for him to open the next season at her New York gallery. She promoted the show as “Optical Painting.”
Despite Stanzcak’s preferred use of “perpetual abstraction” to describe his work, “Op Art” caught the attention of the public. The following year Stanczak was featured with other abstract hard-edge artists in “The Responsive Eye”— an exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art that attracted immense popular attention.
In 1970, the Akron Art Museum hosted its first exhibition of Stanczak’s work. By that time Stanczak’s compositions were becoming increasingly complex, as evidenced by “Dual Glare” — which the museum purchased that year, to achieve the optical effects in this artwork, he used both his intimate understanding of how color is perceived and experiments to determine how hues of different wavelengths react to one another when applied in varying proportions.