Jan Lebenstein, FIGURE, 1963

53.8 x 34.0cm - pen ink, watercolor, paper signed l.d.: Lebenstein 63, p.d.: figure



Provenance:

- Collection of Artur Lejwa (1895-1972) - art dealer and collector who ran Galerie Chalette in New York since 1953. Between 1960 and 1965 he collaborated with Jan Lebenstein, selling numerous works on paper and nearly forty canvases by the artist.

- Private collection New York.

Jan Lebenstein (Brest Litovsk 1930 - Krakow 1999) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1948 to 1954 under Prof. Eugeniusz Eibisch and Artur Nacht-Samborski. In 1955 he took part in an exhibition at the Warsaw Arsenal. A friend of Miron Białoszewski during his studies, he showed his first solo exhibition in 1956 at the Tarczynska Theater. In 1959, he won the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris at the First Biennale of the Young in Paris, and moved to Paris permanently that year. After the series of "drawn figures" (on millimeter paper) and "hieratic figures" from 1955-1958, he paints a series of "axial figures" (1958-1962), which he exhibits in Paris and the USA. At the same time, in 1960, he starts drawing "carnets," a kind of diary, which in the future will provide the motifs used in the paintings. In 1964-1965 he paints "Bestiary," a series of textured, archaic creatures reminiscent of prehistoric excavations. Immediately after, he introduces human and fantastic figures into his paintings, acting out scenes neither mythological nor from a dream, often infused with eroticism. In 1970, he designs stained glass windows for the Centre du Dialogue in Paris. In 1971 receives French citizenship 1974 creates gouaches inspired by George Orwell's Animal Farm. In 1976-1989 he creates exclusively in gouache and pastel, taking up mythological themes and those taken from the Bible: series of illustrations to the Book of Job (published in 1979) and the Apocalypse (published in 1986) in new translations by Czeslaw Milosz. In 1989 he returns to oil painting (series "Pergamon"). The artist received, among others, the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Award in 1976, the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum Award in 1985, the Jan Cybis Award in 1987.