Jonasz Stern (1904-1988)

Aliases: Jonas Stern

Professions: Painter; Illustrator

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  Stern Jonasz Traces of cannibal collage, oil,

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  Stern Jonasz

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  Stern Jonasz Woman in the Interior watercolour,

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  Stern Jonasz Composition watercolour, paper 28.5 x

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Jonasz Stern Biography

(b Kalusz, nr Stanislawów, 4 Aug 1904; d Kraków, 2 Aug 1988). Polish painter and printmaker. He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (1929–35) under Teodor Axentowicz (1859–1938), Wladyslaw Jarocki (1879–1965) and others. He soon came to oppose academic traditions and the modernism of his teachers and turned to Cubism (e.g. Nude , oil, 1933; Kraków, N. Mus.). His works also expressed his socio-political ideas (e.g. The Unemployed , drypoint, 1933; Warsaw, N. Mus.). With Maria Jarema, his lifelong collaborator, and other left-wing artists, he founded the Kraków group and worked on mask and costume designs for the amateur, avant-garde Cricot Theatre in Kraków and satirical puppet shows. His career was interrupted first by political imprisonment (1938) and then by World War II, during which he survived an execution and was rescued from a mass grave. During the period of Socialist Realism (1949–55) he refused to exhibit, but he later began teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (1955–74) and joined the revived Kraków group. Geometrical abstraction, present already in some of his pre-war works, became predominant in the 1950s (e.g. Red and Black , silkscreen, 1958; Warsaw, N. Mus.). Paintings with collages and objets trouvés , such as animal bones, fish skeletons and fragments of fishing-nets and linen inserted into a thick layer of paint, typify Stern’s later art (e.g. Fish That Did Not Want to Swim , 1967; Poznan, N. Mus.). With a subtle feeling for colour and texture he created metaphorical compositions that evoked his own life, indelibly marked by his wartime experiences (e.g. Humiliation , collage, 1978; Lódz, Mus. A.).

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