Wanda Paklikowska-Winnicka (1914-2001), No. 79 from the biological series, 1960

Provenance
Warsaw, private collection. France, private collection.

The offered painting by Wanda Paklikowska-Winnicka is an abstract painting, painting of matter, with strongly marked texture, complex and dynamic composition. Works from the biological series belong to a fully defined and mature phase in the artist's work. In addition to the series described as figural paintings, biological compositions are based on forms resembling fragments of organisms or human figures and the canvas is organized by rich painting matter. The fleshy texture is an element that characterizes all the work of Paklikowska-Winnicka, an artist who came to painting through the experience of sculpture. In the offered painting from the biological series, what draws attention is not only the texture but what emerges from it. The tuberous matter creates a silhouetted, elongated form reminiscent of a prehistoric organism, which appears spatially from the dark background of the painting.
Paklikowska-Winnicka's paintings in recent years have been unjustly overshadowed by the work of artists who also experimented with matter - Jonasz Stern, Tadeusz Kantor, Alexander Kobzdej. In the 1960s she repeatedly exhibited her work at the Galerie Lambert in Paris, which became a springboard for exhibitions overseas as well, such as the one at Artforum in New York in 1963. Paklikowska-Winnicka's paintings were also well known in the country - Warsaw's Zachęta gallery regularly organized shows of her work. In the artistic environment she had a strong position, enjoyed authority - in the masculinized structures of the Academy of Fine Arts she was for some time the only woman to run her own studio in the Faculty of Painting. Wanda Paklikowska-Winnicka, along with Jadwiga Maziarska, belongs to the first league of post-war female artists whose contribution to the development of Polish contemporary art is undeniable.