Aleksandra Jachtoma, “Sahara”, 1981, oil on canvas, 82 x 82 cm

The painter was born in 1932. She was a founding member of the Warsaw art group Rekonesans, established in 1963. She received a Minister of Culture and Art Award for lifetime achievement in 1987, as well as the Cyprian Kamil Norwid Award and the Jan Cybis Award from the Warsaw District of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers in 2003.

The painting Sahara, like many other abstract canvases by this artist, is an analysis of a narrow band of the solar spectrum. Only the subtle bright band, running at a short distance from the edge of the painting, signals to us that we are dealing with a process of human observation of this luminous phenomenon, a record of that observation, and therefore its translation into the medium of canvas and oil paint. Jachtoma’s works are often regarded in art history and criticism as explorations of the emotional meanings of color. However, it is too easy to assign emotionality to women today and to say that these paintings represent the artist’s emotional states. Jachtoma is a researcher—not of feelings, emotions, or intuition, but of the semantics and structure of painting. In her compositions, following the path of Władysław Strzemiński, she describes the painterly rectangle, identifies, and brings out its boundaries.

Dorota Jarecka