patterned times

Pre– and Post–World War 1 art experiments: new forms to express modern life.

Harsh colors; flat surfaces.

Linear drawings by Waclaw Szpakowski, an architectural engineer who worked for the Polish post and telegraph agency and created these works in his spare time. Beginning in the early 1920s Szpakowski made ink drawings on tracing paper. He traced lines by hand, always making them one millimeter thick and setting them four millimeters apart, to produce carefully calculated optical effects. He thought of these rhythmic compositions as expressing the underlying mathematical order of the universe. Occasionally, he even performed them on his violin, reading them as musical scores. Unlike most artists in our exhibition who exchanged ideas and works, Szpakowski worked in isolation and in complete indifference to the art of his time.

gombrich