Wojciech Fangor (1922, Warsaw – 2015, Warsaw), “M 18,” 1966

Provenance
Chalette Gallery, New York, 1967
Collection of Arthur and Elisabeth Dempster, Cambridge, acquired in June 1967

Biography
During the occupation, he studied privately under Tadeusz Pruszkowski and Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski. He received his diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1946. For the Youth and Students Festival in Warsaw, he designed an outdoor spatial installation together with Henryk Tomaszewski. From then on, his paintings were created in relation to the space beyond the canvas—as in the famous “Study of Space” from 1958, which preceded the global development of environmental art. His painting installations from the 1950s and 1960s, composed of contrasting colored circles and waves, explored optical phenomena and were closely related to Op Art. The culmination of this period was a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1970). He taught at universities in England and the United States. His works are included in the world’s most prominent collections.