Zbylut GRZYWACZ (1939-2004), Portrait of a Woman in a Red Dress, ca.1963

oil, canvas; 73 x 60 cm;
Signed on reverse, on the painter's loom: Zbylut (in pencil);
Provenance: collection of the artist's family.
Painter and collector associated with the Krakow art community. Founder, together with Leszek Sobocki, Maciej Bieniasz and Jacek Waltos, of the "Wprost" art group, whose tenets are perfectly illustrated by the works of Zbylut Grzywacz. This circle of artists, formed in 1966, was characterized by realism bordering on anti-aestheticism, where the images of the figures in the paintings, were not idealized on the contrary, on the contrary, as in the works of Adam Hofman or Andrzej Wróblewski, they also depicted the social aspects of human existence. The compositions, devoid of idealization, at the same time sometimes commenting on reality, also focused on figuration, as another element that united for almost 20 years, the group of Krakow painters were attitudes that placed them in opposition to artists associated with colorism, abstractionism or the widely understood artistic avant-garde.