Julian Stanczak: The Eighties

Diane Rosenstein Gallery is very pleased to announce The Eighties, our third solo exhibition with Julian Stanczak. This installation of fifteen paintings made between 1982-1990 explores Stanczak's skillful use of gradations of color and form to create a subtle experience of light. In essence and outlook they are also emotional landscapes, an effort to transcend the surface containment of the painting as object and connect with the viewer in a perceptual way. Stanczak lived and worked in Cleveland, Ohio, but wrote about the impact on his painting of his life as a Polish refugee in Uganda, and the simultaneous beauty of the African landscape. “When I see the dramatic shapes and colors of nature, observe their power, it triggers in me the need to translate these primordial forces.”

Julian Stanczak (1928 – 2017) was an American painter and printmaker, and a pioneer of Op Art. His early life was marked by enormous personal struggle, and equally by his commitment to an uplifted outlook informed by art and music. He was born in Poland, and when World War II broke out, he was sent to a concentration camp in Siberia. In 1942, after his escape, he lived as a refugee in Uganda, where he learned to paint with his left hand (he lost the use of his right arm for good at the Siberian camp). He immigrated to the United States in 1950, received his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1954, and the M.F.A from Yale University in 1956, where he studied with Josef Albers and Conrad Marca-Relli. His work has been included in exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally from 1948 to the present day. Important group shows include The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1965; Paintings in the White House at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1966; and Ghosts in the Machine at the New Museum, New York, 2012. 

Significant surveys of his work include Julian Stanczak: 50 Year Retrospective, Cleveland Institute of Art, Ohio, 2001; and currently, Full Sprectrum: Paintings, Drawings and Prints of Julian Stanczak; Wood and Stone Sculptures of Barbara Stanczak, a retrospective at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana. 

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Barbara Stanczak, Krzys Stanczak, Neil Rector, and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NYC, in the organization of this exhibition.