Janina Węgrzynowska, Gray-Orange Painting, 1979, oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm 

Janina Węgrzynowska (1930–2010) was a painter and graphic artist, and a member of the Association of Polish Artists (ZPAP). She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (1949-1955), and received her diploma from the Painting Department in the studio of Professor Eugeniusz Eibisch. She was a long-time contributor to the weekly magazine “Argumenty” (1958–1975) and Polish Television (1975–1991). She created paintings, collages and spatial objects. Her work was frequently presented at the Festival of Polish Contemporary Painting at the Castle of Pomeranian Dukes in Szczecin and the annual Exhibition of Painting and Graphics of the Warsaw District ZPAP at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. In 2005, an exhibition of her works took place at Galeria Studio in Warsaw, along with a laser project entitled Drawing with Light, prepared in cooperation with the Laboratory of Laser Scenography and Special Lighting Effects at the Warsaw University of Technology.

Węgrzynowska’s 1979 Gray-Orange Painting in the Galeria Studio Collection can be assigned to a group of vivid, multicolored compositions, in which the artist used intense color in such a way as to bring out the full breadth of luminous and obscuring effects. She juxtaposed both contrasting colors and multiple shades of a single color. Węgrzynowska claimed that she always connected her path in art with light and movement. Movement, according to her, exists continuously in space and affects objects, in contradiction to painting, which is inherently static. “I remember,” she recalled, “that whenever I left museums, I was surprised by the contrast between the bustling street and the motionless figures frozen in stillness in the paintings I had seen. This feeling gave me food for thought, provoking the question—what should paintings of people caught up in the 20th century look like? It was a challenge.”

Paulina Olszewska