Jan Tarasin

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Jan Tarasin (1926-2009) was a versatile artist who worked in a variety of mediums including painting, graphic design, drawing, photography, and writing. He was born on September 11th 1926 in Kalisz, Poland and died on August 8th 2009 in Warsaw. He studied painting and graphic design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he later gave lectures and served as rector. Tarasin was a classic of contemporary Polish painting and is considered a disciple of the abstract movement, but he never fully abandoned figurative art. In his early paintings from the 1950s, he created still lifes composed of ordinary objects, painted in a style of ascetic realism. By the second half of the 1950s, the objects in his paintings became increasingly objectified and abstract, and Tarasin became interested in the world of objects, which he began to simplify and reduce until a system of abstract signs was formed. In 1962, Tarasin went on a scholarship to China and Vietnam, and the influence of oriental calligraphy can be seen in his later works. In 1966, his style changed as he began to incorporate collages into his paintings, which were composed of small objects or pieces of objects placed in hot lava. During the 1970s, Tarasin’s works became more abstract, featuring unrecognisable forms composed of black shapes on bright surfaces. In the 1980s, his objects became larger and more expressive, conveying the movement of contradictory forces and the variability of arrangements of signs and objects. Jan Tarasin was awarded the Cyprian Kamil Norwid critics’ prize for best painting exhibition in 1976 and the Jan Cybis prize in 1984. He is considered a classic of contemporary Polish painting and is known for his interest in the relationship between logic, determination, and chance, as well as the harmony and disharmony of the world.