Three Screenprints, from: Twelve Progressions

The titles of the prints are: Three to Compare, Fractions, and Veiled.

Julian Stanczak, who died two years ago aged 88, was born in Poland in 1928. Still a child, he and his family were deported to a labor camp in Siberia during World War II, where he lost the use of his right arm. When he was 13 years old, they managed to flee to Persia and ended up in a Polish refugee camp in Uganda, where he learned to write and paint with his left hand. After the war, he lived in London for several years, before emigrating to the US in 1950. He settled in Cleveland, Ohio, and studied Fine Arts at the Cleveland Institute of Art and at Yale, where Josef Albers was amongst his teachers. He acquired American nationality in 1957.
He became Professor of Painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1964, a post he held for over thirty years.
Stanczak is considered one of the founding figures of Op Art and indeed the movement was named after the title of his first important exhibition in New York, Julian Stanczak: Optical Paintings, held at the Martha Jackson Gallery in 1964. His works are in public collections all over the US. His estate is represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.
Of his life and art, Stanczak said: “I did not want to be bombarded daily by the past. I looked for anonymity of actions through nonreferential abstract art.” (quoted in: Roberta Smith, Julian Stanczak, Abstract Painter, Dies at 88, The New York Times, April 11, 2017.)
The present three prints from the 1960s exemplify his illusionistic play with undulating, parallel lines and his glowing, contrasting colors, which were inspired by light and colors he had experienced as a youth living in Uganda.