HENRYK GOTLIB (1990 – 1966)
“
Oil painting on canvas. 25”
x 30” (635 x 762mm). Signed.
Prov: Exhibited Scottish
National Gallery of Modern Art 1970,
Retrospective of Paintings
& Drawings by Henryk Gotlib. Catalogue No. 28.
Also exhibited
at
Lent to these
Exhibitions by Mrs Janet Gotlib, the Artist’s wife.
Bears exhibition label. IMAGE
Henryk Gotlib was born at Kracow in Poland and studied there at
the Academy of Fine Art and later in Munich, Amsterdam and Paris. His first one man show was in Warsaw in
1918, followed by further one-man shows at the Caspar Gallery in Berlin (1921),
the Van Gogh Gallery in Amsterdam (1922), the Salon d’Automne, the Salon des
Tuileries, the Salon des Independants and a one-man show at the Galerie
Montparnasse (1930), official Polish art exhibitions in Paris, Brussels,
Stockholm, Berlin (1930-4), the Leger Gallery, London in 1941 exhibiting a
large Polish triptych titled “Christ in Warsaw” which is now in the National
Museum of Warsaw, Agnews Gallery, London (1942), One man show at Roland, Browse and Delbanco
(1945, 1947, 1949), O’Hana Gallery, London (1953), Crane Kalman Gallery, London
(1958, 1961, 1963) and “Continental
British School of Painting” at Wakefield City Art Gallery (1959). After his
death in 1966 a one man show of his work was held at the Scottish National
Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh,
where this painting was exhibited in 1970 and also at the National
Museum of Wales, Cardiff and Southampton City Art Gallery in the same year. Further exhibitions followed including a one
man shows at the Morley College Gallery, London (1971), Cardiff University,
Wales (1972), Hull University (1972),
Keele University (1972), Strathclyde University, Glasgow (1973), Ashgate
Gallery, Farnham (1974), Buxton Mill Gallery, near Norwich (1974), Southover
Gallery, Lewes (1975), Campbell & Franks Ltd., London (1977), the National
Museum, Warsaw (1980), Surrey University (1982), Leicestershire Museums and Art
Galleries (1983) and Leinster Fine Art, London (1983). Group shows include Arco,
Madrid (1983) and Bath Festival,
Contemporary Art Fair (1983). In
Krakow he became Leader of the Polish Avant Garde Formist movement with
exhibitions in Berlin, Amsterdam and Poland.
He came to England in 1939. From the late 1950s he developed a new expressionism
externalising the, what he called, “energies of the spirit”. Joseph Herman wrote of Gotlib’s later work
“they are a monument of artistic sincerity, carried to the limits of one man’s
gifts. It is my belief that with this
group of pictures Gotlib struck true art.” His work was represented in “Fifty
Years of British Art” at the Tate Gallery in 1964 and can be found in many
Public Collections including the Tate Gallery, National Museum Warsaw; National
Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Walker Gallery, Liverpool;
Leicestershire Museum and Art Galleries; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester;
Aberdeen Art Gallery; the Arts Council of Great Britain; the Gulbenkian
Foundation; Universities of Birmingham, Stirling, Cardiff, Strathclyde and the
Department of the Environment.
