Franciszek Starowieyski, DE PROFUNDIS, 2006

68,5 x 48,5cm - pastel, light gray paper

68,5 x 48,5 cm (in light passe-partout)

signed l.g. in black pastel: DE PROFUNDIS, lower in brown: 17 FS 06, lower in black in brown circle: W

A standing figure with outstretched wings instead of hands, usually with a bird's head, dressed in a long flowing gown - this is a frequent motif appearing on posters, prints and drawings by Franciszek Starowieyski since the late 1960s (one of the first versions was on the poster of the Italian film The Witch in Love (dir. D. Damiani, 1968). Evidently inspired by the statue of Nike of Samothrace, this was also the title of a series of color lithographs from 1971; a constant presence in Franciszek Starowieyski's art since the mid-1970s. At that time, a color lithograph was created, reflected in various color variants of Nike (a.k.a. Taperreska - a title applied interchangeably to the same composition). Over time, the flaccid Nike takes on a body, her full shapes are exposed, but the compositional scheme remains the same.

The letter "W" next to the signature indicates that the drawing was made in Warsaw.



♣ A fee will be added to the auctioned price in addition to other costs, resulting from the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Act of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite).

Franciszek Starowieyski (Bratkówka near Krosno, July 8, 1930 - Warsaw, February 23, 2009), who used the pseudonym Jan Byk, studied from 1949 to 1952 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Prof. Wojciech Weiss , after which he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, receiving his diploma in the studio of Prof. Michał Bylina in 1955. In the 1960s and 1970s, he gained the greatest recognition as a poster designer, in which he quickly rivaled the coryphaeuses of this art in Poland. He cultivated a poster of the author's type, with a recognizable style based on sweeping and at the same time calligraphic drawing, and above all surprising, surreal associations. Since 1964 he was the art director of the fashionable monthly magazine "You and I". With time, the predominance in his achievements gained "pure" drawing, since 1980 often presented in the form of dynamic sessions of the so-called "Theater of Drawing", with the participation of models, audience and the artist himself, fulfilling in it the role of demiurge. He created many painting and drawing compositions emanating a surreal atmosphere of life on the verge of physical decay, being a contemporary version of the vanitas theme. Fascinated by Baroque culture, the artist has been anti-dating all his works by 300 years since 1970. The artist was the recipient of numerous awards, which he won at such exhibitions as the Sao Paulo Art Biennale 1973, the International Film Poster Exhibition, Cannes 1974, the "Annual Key Award", Los Angeles 1978, among others. He was in New York on several occasions at the invitation of the Kosciuszko Foundation. In 1980 he was a professor at the Berliner Hochschule der Künste, in the 1990s he taught at the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw.