1970
acrylic on canvas
80.3 x 80.5 cm (31 5/8 x 31 3/4 in.)
signed and dated on verso

PROVENANCE
Collection of Bart N. Stephens, Cultural AttachГ© of the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, 1963-1965

LOT NOTES
Bart N. Stephens spent several decades as a cultural affairs officer in Europe and Asia, during which time he was stationed in post-War Warsaw as a Cultural Attache for some years during the 60s. As Stephens writes in his essay Where Shall We Hang It? Notes on Collecting Polish Art, it was in "Warsaw which had arisen Phoenix-like from the war`s inferno, [that he and his wife, an artist herself,] first became involved in the art scene and began collecting original art. [Discovering] an alive, talented, and varied community of artists in Poland." Coming into contact with the works by, and often with the artists themselves, Jan Cybis, Aleksander Kobzdej, and many other leading figures of the 1960s and 70s, Stephens at times found himself bidding on the same works as the Museum of Modern Art (as in the case of Nucleus by Zbignew Makowski). Polish painting was then seen as the ``new frontier`` of European art, with many foreign dealers waking up to its allure, and at times buying the contents of an artist`s studio outright. The Stephens collection thus presents a mid-century capsule of some of Poland’s greatest modernists, with many of the works being eventually exhibited or included in European and American publications and exhibitions.