Wojciech Fangor
Wojciech Fangor was born in 1922 in Warsaw. He was one of the most distinctive painters to emerge from postwar Poland and a key founder of the Polish School of Posters.
An accomplished painter, graphic designer, poster artist, and sculptor, Fangor was a truly unique modernist artist and visionary talent.
“A drawing is a basic and direct method of contacting with the world we see and study... Reality is intangible. Drawing helps grasp, record, and control it.”
About Wojciech Fangor
15 Nov 2022 - 25 Oct 2015
Wojciech Fangor was born in Warsaw on 15th November 1922 and studied art at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. After the outbreak of World War 2 he was forced to continue his studies privately but was awarded a diploma, in lieu of attendance, in 1946. He worked as an assistant professor at the university from 1953 to 1961, when he left Poland for West Berlin and then England.
Fangor designed hundreds of iconic Polish film posters, developing his own distinct visual grammar which combined photo collage with bold and expressive painterly strokes.
In 1966 Wojciech Fangor moved to America where he would spend the next three decades. Just one year later, in 1970, The Guggenheim Museum in New York exhibited his work, making Fangor the first ever Polish artist to have a solo exhibition there.
Whilst his colourful spheres are instantly recognisable Wojciech Fangor was a varied artist who experimented with different styles and techniques. Some of his works used small dots of electronic pixels, others were figurative, many were inspired by the mass-media.
During the second half of the 20th century became a pioneer of op Art and dedicated his career to exploring the emotional effects of colour and form and his work has been exhibited around the world. In 1999, towards the end of his life, Wojciech Fangor returned to his Polish roots and created a studio in an old mill in a small town near Warsaw. He continued to make art and in 2014 designed murals for the station walls of the Warsaw Underground. He sadly passed away in 2015.
Solo Exhibitions
(a selection)
1957 – Wojciech Fangor A Study of Space, Nowa Kultura Salon, Warsaw
1962 – Institute of Contemporary Art, Washington DC
1963 – Lambert Gallery, Paris
1965 – MoMA, New York (Group exhibition)
1965 – Springer Gallery, Berlin, Germany
1970 – The Guggenheim Museum, New York
1971 – University Art Museum, Berkeley, California
1974 – Hokin Gallery, Chicago
1990 – Retrospective Exhibition – 50 years of painting, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw
1994 – The Museum of Art, Radom
2003 – Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
2000, 2003 – Stefan Szydłowski Gallery, Warsaw
Further Reading
Read more about Wojciech Fangor at Culture.pl
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