Composition - study

Szczecin's collections contain the painting Kompozycja – studium Okno – szkic do obrazu [The Composition - Study of Window - Sketch for a Painting] by Strzemiński. It is not the only work by Strzemiński which takes up this theme. An example is Okno [Window] from 1948 at the Starmach Gallery in Kraków. Like most of Strzemiński's works, it is an artistic statement closely related to his theoretical reflections. In the study of the window, we can see references to the analysis of full empirical vision, which is part of the considerations from his Teorii widzenia [Theory of Vision] (Kraków 1958). The artist explains the significance of the three-dimensional convergent perspective, based on which spatial effects were created from the 15th to the first half of the 19th century. The rules of its creation were closely related to the laws of mathematical calculations, seemingly infallible. However, Strzemiński notes that it was based on an erroneous premise as if one grasped the reality with a single glance, and at the end lay the point of convergence. The theorist notes that this is not the case - our eyes wander from object to object. He created numerous sketches of rooms that show diagrams of arrangements of paintings (Hooch, Vermeer, etc.) to confirm his theory. The study of a window depicts a similar one, which we find on the outlines of rooms in his theoretical considerations. In the Szczecin sketch, they are additionally situated on arrangements of geometric shapes of one colour - blue, green, beige, maroon and several shades of brown. They can be read as spots connoting certain fixed forms of the landscape that might appear behind the window, and blue is as much a reference to what is behind the window as to the window itself (the blue spot has been detached from its contour). The work is an attempt to render reality following the awareness of the principles of the theory of vision - the study of the window thus becomes an answer to how an object can be shown on the assumption that the gaze is mobile.

Beata Małgorzata Wolska