Flowers, 1965-70
Jan Cybis

The painting most probably came into being in the second half of the1960s. Its creator had a tendency to use large vertical canvases (some measuring 61 x 46 cm) on which to paint his masterful flowers. Flowers from the Tom Podl collection show similarities in treatment of the theme and structure of painting matter to other of his works that include Flowers in Delft Vase, (1968, oil on canvas, which is in the artist's family collection) and to Flowers in Dark Blue Glass (ca. 1967, oil on canvas, in a private collection in Poznań). The work depicted here was painted at the height of its creator's professional life and can be perceived as a perfect reflection of the painter's artistic philosophy. Józef Czapski, Cybis' close friend and an admirer of his painting, wrote in a study he dedicated posthumously to the artist: "It does not matter if canvases were painted in the twenties or the sixties - in thousands of versions, his approach is always the same - whether still life, portrait or landscape - whether Polish or Parisian - there is a vision, an obsession 'du fait pictural', with the challenge of structuring the colorful surface which is three-dimensional and at the same time never a flat picture. It always contains, as its starting point, the experience of nature, a tree form, a face, an object. The more skilled the creator, the more composed it becomes, the more 'imbued' it is with a rich depth of color which is the final purpose of the canvas" (see Czapski 1983, p. 364).

Provenance:

Purchased from Jordanowskis, 1986; owned by its author until 1971

References:

© Copyright 2001 Tom Podl, art reproductions and text.