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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Restraint and Mood
/ text of Andrzej Kostołowski
from the catalog off BWA in Poznan exhibition in 1999 /
Anna Cyronek, abstractionist with
a very specific individual manner of painting, is not very well
known outside Poznan. It is a pity since her proposals, together
with the accomplishment of a few other painters of the seventies
and eighties, constitute a certain bridge between heroic liberation
of gesture (as in Kantor or Dominik) and what the next generations
present (e. g. Tarasewicz or Dłużewski). Most generally speaking,
that „bridge” consists on the one hand in her great attachment to
the medium of painting, faithfulness to the „division of work” (leading
to Strzemiński and for instance Hałas). So there is no temptation
here to go beyond the achievement of simultaneous painting. On the
other hand, Anna Cyronek „thins down” pictorial quality of gestures,
strips them of the expression and tension that might carry all violent
actions with paint and texture. In doing this, she further defictionalizes
her pictorial narratives. It is through this restraint and close
adherence to the reductivist resistance to illusion that she limits
herself to sonorous colours, at first only signaling ones, in her
later work suspended, seemingIy unfinished. This road makes her
approach a version of what has been defined as „postpictoriality”.
It gives her astonishing control over compositions with quite pronouced
emotional accents. As she herself stated: „With me, there is no
chance. I try to be precise in painting a picture. I believe that
a painting must have general assumptions”.
Those „general assumptions”
are not some manifestation treated either as a set of structures
(constellations) or single elements (particles, autonomous beings)
or as an evident fragment of the Cosmos. So, without painting or
„representing” anything, she is strongly on the side of the affirmation
of life treated neither as thoughtless force or something submitted
to mirror reflection. Rather, she is interested in continuous change,
described by the Greek atomists, or cosmic „tissue”, not devoid
of the aesthetic logic of pulsation (as in the early abstractions,
done before 1910 by Hilma af Klint or Curlionis).
A large part
of the artist's creative processes involves plein-air work. The
tradition of such encounters with nature has its predecessors in
the l9th century Barbizon painters and , closer to our times, postimpressionists.
Piein-air sessions organized today most often mean „getting away”
from the metropolis. And, in places as different as Łagów,
Osieki or Obrzycko, artists seldom create something that would be
a reaction to landscape and nature. Rather, they tend to nurture
their own motifs and methods and only rarely take a real look around.
With Anna it is different. Her sketchbooks and small gouaches, amazingly
well studied and organized (originals for pictures), executed in
plein air sessions are proofs of a great passion. They penetrate
atmosphere, moods, feelings and premonitions, closely connected
with piaces hidden in thickets, shrubbery, herbs, among pebbles,
in sand or water. Her sketches and later paintings do not tell a
story and are not illusionistic. Nor do they present the flickering
of allusion in the style of Cybis or Rudzka. They show „a colourist”s
pictorial utterance without „colourist tradition”.,This means that
they are pictorial narratives, executed very sparingly and with
a never-failing sense of the impact of form and colour, stopping
at exactly the point where they might turn into anecdote. These
are works consciously simultaneous, that is, showing a simultaneous
presence of shapes scattered all over the canvas surface. We have
here no stories or a simulation of something that would go beyond
pure pictorial narration. Nor do we have assymetric composition,
golden divisions, excessive illusion of socalled depth. Vibrating
and pulsating elements manifest their chaotic, casual and isomorphic
character. Painted with a sure stroke, with many shining clearances
though without textural effects, they are amazingly free. They represent
a sure use of these and not any other elements. Aware that we are
dealing with a flat picture, we do not doubt subtle surface games
suggested by Iights and values, but this is just one small concession
to the mimetic. A superior role is played by noble games of colour
intermingled with light. In the „geometric” abstractions painted
at the turn of the sixties, we can already see the author's truly
expert knowledge of the psychological climates that such and not
any other harmonies and dissonances can produce. In the dominating
ovals and elipses there are signalling pulsations, flowing from
and overlapping of ordered structures, crystal progressions and
regressions. In Yellow Ellipsis on Blue (1970) interior effects
very suggestively correspond with the shape of form.
Some paintings
of that time naturally interconnect and make up a sequence. Colours
sound strongly though never aggressively. And the their subtle use
meets with what Brendel defined as the rejection of dryness in favour
of „graphological deviations and emotional involvement”
In late
seventies symmetries and repetitions constraining the artist grow
loose. At the same time it is clear that the geometrical figure
building gave her indestructible discipline. Despite the fact that
the freely „let out" stripes of form are irregular, asymmetrical
and even somewhat gesturelike, they show great certainty of generalized
smoothness or spiral twists.
Around 1980 there is a clear tendency
to define irregular rectanglelike elements by margins. They thus
become transparent, as it were. Sometimes we can see the earlier
„graphologicainess” - vistas of forms running in all directions
- notes on the „genuine” face of the world”. in 1985, the „microscopic”
stage begins to develop. Works more distinctiy demonstrate structures
as if optically enlarged. This is accompanied by the finesse of
„watercolour”, that is, a translation onto oil or acrylic of watercolours”
characteristic washing.
In the second half of the eighties,
some pictures show large light structures of botanical elements
vibrating in daylight; others are dark, nocturnal and thickened.
„Forms in motion” (1986), subjected to washing, create a layer of
contours of elements protruding pebblelike. In other pictures of
that time, amid generalized floristicity, lilac coulisses emphasize
flashes of vegetative green at the centre. Among the shapes, apart
from ovals, there appear „crescents” or „kidneys. Games of light
allow to bring forth a nearly infinite number of elements: crowding,
fluctuating, running, piling up, spraying. Entire structures seem
to be fragments of chaos running out and beyond the picture edge.
„The border of the canvas edge is oper. Elements run out and beyond
the picture; they seem never-ending”wrote the artist.
Works
from the „Small Forms” cycle (1989) have elements of different sizes;
the activity of the smallest ones seems to decide the composition”s
mood and character. in the nineties, Anna focuses on two processes.
On the one hand, she proves ever more strongly that the apparent
sketchiness and „unfinishedness” are linked to her artistry in suggesting
non-closed arrangements which are always more genuine than all arbitrary
regularities. Secondly, she broadens the scale of effects. Some
structures glow and are almost „burnt” in parts. Others seem to
be evidently sunk in water, clear or muddy. Others still pulsate
(see Gielniak's famous linoleum prints) as if it was cosmic dust.
Gradations of red and other suggestions of the organicity of her
latest works reach almost inside our organisms. In this way Anna
suggests one more way to read her paintings, which are executed
with restraint and toned expression and yet are also records - rich
in emotions and other possibilities of finding moods in them.
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