FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Julian Stanczak: Color - Grid
October 15 – November 14, 2010

Reception: October 14, 6:00-8:00 pm

The grid has been employed as a prevailing formal consideration throughout the long established canon of mid-20th century abstraction. In the work of Julian Stanczak, the geometry of the grid serves as a container for intense, saturated color and for the experience of light as an almost physical presence. As Michael Amy points out: Stanczak has an uncanny understanding of the properties of color, and his controlled permutations can be unexpectedly lively. Tightly regimented, his geometric patterns seem at times to elicit a kind of pure spirituality.

Stanczak’s first New York exhibition was held at the famed Martha Jackson Gallery in 1964. Entitled Julian Stanczak–Optical Paintings, the show sought to separate Stanczak’s work from the reigning styles of pop art and color field painting. In his review of the exhibition in Arts Magazine, Donald Judd first employed the term “Op” to describe Stanczak’s work, although only a limited number of his paintings fall within this category. Regardless of designation, Stanczak’s work generates dynamic visual and even visceral responses. A constant sense of movement endows his paintings with the urgency of the “living, breathing moment” and emphasizes the synthesis of Stanczak’s observations of the physical world. Stanczak’s paintings are both measured illusions, as well as subtleties of ordinary, but vital experiences.

Julian Stanczak was born in Poland in 1928 and emigrated to the United States in 1950. He received his B.A. from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1954, and subsequently studied under Joseph Albers and Conrad Marca-Relli at Yale University, where he received an M.F.A. in 1956. He returned to Cleveland and began a thirty-eight year teaching career at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Julian Stanczak continues to live and work in Ohio.
Stanczak has participated in many major group and one-man exhibitions, including the legendary The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art in1965; Contemporary Painting, 1968 at the Whitney Museum of Art; Julian Stanczak: A Retrospective 1948-1998 at the Butler Institute of American Art; Optic Nerve at the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, 2007; and, Julian Stanczak: Recent Work, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio in 2009. His work is included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Cleveland Museum of Art; The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and many others.

A full color catalogue accompanies the exhibition. For further information, please contact Carol Corey or Jillian Brodie at 212/223-2227 or contact@danese.com.

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