gouache, paper, 45 x 58.5 cm signed and described on the reverse: Lenica /18
provenance: Ferrero Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland; private collection, Germany
Alfred Lenica was born in 1899 in Pabianice and died in 1977 in Warsaw. He studied painting and drawing privately in the studios of Artur Hannytkiewicz and Piotr Kubowicz, while also studying political economy at the University of Poznan, and took up music studies at the Poznan Conservatory. In the 1930s, he painted paintings influenced by Cubism, then Surrealism. In 1947 he co-founded the avant-garde group 4F+R / paint, form, fantasy, texture + realism/. Author of the first Polish work from the informel trend - Paints in motion - tempera, 1949. member of the Krakow Group. During the period of socialist realism in the official trend of art promoted by the communist state, in 1948-50 president of the Poznań District of the ZPZP. After 1956 he returned to informel, with time he returned to surrealism working out his own style - swirling, colorful, sometimes calligraphic forms and characteristic, individual techniques.
