Page 27 - Studio International - June 1965

Every age, however subject it may be to doctrines and assumption of hostility to those who work differently.
collective movements, possesses some independent It is simply the expression of a sincere soul that finds
artists-solitary figures who are outside the scope of within itself that anguish that is proper to it. This form
conventional classifications and who express in an of art is, for its creator, both a means of self-abstraction
individual way the preoccupations of their own times. and of engagement without any need to find in the
Jan Lebenstein is one of these artists apart; his was a event itself any pretext of actuality; that is to say, he
sudden apparition in his native Poland just at a time need not necessarily adopt either realism or abstraction
when, in the West, everyone was quite convinced that in order to accord with his own times.
there was nothing to hope for from the artists of the Jan Lebenstein was born at Brest-Litovsk in 1930.
Eastern bloc countries. The works exhibited by this He followed a traditional course at a School for the
painter at the Polish section of the First Young Artists' Fine Arts at Warsaw: in these years his particular gifts
Biennale in Paris in 1959 was therefore a completely became obvious. During his adolescence, he quite
surprising revelation. So extreme did this discovery regularly frequented certain artistic and literary circles
seem, that the Jury decided to award Lebenstein the for some time. In about 1955, when his education was
Ville de Paris prize that had just been established and at an end, he thought it necessary to separate himself
also to give him a scholarship for several months' stay in from these circles, since he found his own conceptions
France. Lebenstein owed this sudden rise to fame quite different: there was a dichotomy between their
solely to his own merits as an artist, as it was completely problems and his own. This division also took place,
unpremeditated. He had nevertheless paid his first visit perhaps because the intellectual climate of his country
to France a few years before; he was not only unnoticed, was beginning to change quite deeply, and to become
but experienced a certain feeling of 'deception', even of more favourable to the expression of individual
hostility, that arose from long awaiting and expecting a experiences and experiments. At present, Poland is
very different effect. When he left France on that occa­ undergoing a process of development in the field of
sion, he did not think that he would return so soon. aesthetic ideas: there is a liberation of the means of
In fact, his reservations were quite justified: Leben­ expression in the course of a movement that had its
stein's art cannot be reconciled with the experiences of beginning with the fine arts in 1954, reaching literature
any other painter and the solitude that he seeks to trans­ in 1955, and, finally, politics in about 1956.
Figure I 00 1 9 60
Collect,on · Mr. List. New Yo, k mit is not by any means an attitude, and still less an Lebenstein was at that time connected with some

241