Julian Stanczak
Birth Date: November 5, 1928
Death Date: March 25, 2017
Artist Gallery
Julian Stanczak was born in 1928 in Poland. In 1940, as a young boy, the ravages of World War II touched his native land and circumstance found him exiled to Perm, Russia, a Siberian concentration camp where severe mistreatment cost him the use of his right arm. In 1942 in search of freedom, the Stanczak family traveled to East Africa. It was then that Julian experienced his first private art lessons after teaching himself to become left-handed. Stanczak noted sometime later that while he was essentially unaware of African life,” …their rhythm, elegance, cohesiveness, beat of the drums, and movement of their bodies stayed unconsciously with me”. Six years later, the Stanczaks traveled to London where Julian continued his art lessons for two years at the Borough Polytechnic Institute. In 1950 Julian moved to the United States where he continued his education at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Yale University, receiving his MFA. Within ten years of his emigration to the United States, Stanczak’s work evolved from representation to pure abstraction. He coined the term "Op Art" and became a leader of the Op Art movement. His inherent sense of color and rigorous structural conceptions led him to produce a wide variety of visual effects in his work. Transparent or translucent planes appear to overlap, suggesting visual rhythm and color harmonies.