Piotr Strelnik (1956-), Still life with watermelon

Piotr Strelnik was born in 1956 in Lublin. He graduated from an art high school in Lublin and later took up studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he specialized in drawing and graphics. In 1983 he settled in Paris and turned definitively to painting. Thus began a very productive period in Strelnik's work, in which the artist was inspired by both his Polish roots and his knowledge of art history. Especially the latter element is perfectly evident in his works from the beginning of his career, where the influence of directions such as Fauvism or Neo-Impressionism and artists including Cezanne, Van Gogh, Larionov and Chaim Soutine are mixed. During this period, Strelnik also began experimenting with different materials, such as moving away from canvas to cardboard, allowing for faster action and thus greater freedom of expression, as the artist "paints as he draws." His works from the '80s and '90s are still figurative, but slowly the artist began to evolve towards non-figurativeness. In the most recent works, recognizable motifs disappear and we can only sometimes guess at shreds of landscapes among large areas covered with relatively uniform color, and among strong lines. Strelnik disintegrates form in favor of painterly gesture, moving from perspective to the suggestion of depth. However, both his figurative works and his later non-figurative works are characterized by simplicity and at the same time harmony of composition.