Rajmund Ziemski

"Rajmund Ziemski (1930-2005) He debuted at The National Exhibition of Young Visual Art "Against War - Against Fascism" at the Warsaw Arsenal (1955). Later, during the "thaw" he joined an art group centred around Marian Bogusz and his "Krzywe Koło" Gallery. To boot, in 1959 Ziemski took part in the 3rd Modern Art Exhibition in Warsaw.
The artist's statement about this aspect of his work:
  " During the period of the Arsenal exhibition, and also later in 1956-57 my paintings came closer to figurative art. I dwelt in the world of known realities, and these realities were enough for the content I wanted to show. But then it turned out that I needed to find forms somewhat resembling synthesis, forms which create not derivative-repetitive, but forms with evocative style fitting for the expected result."
Deserted compositions with recognisable architectural forms, which were gradually distorted according to the rhythm of imagination that could be found both in earlier and in subsequent works (Sun Over the City, Landscape in Purples and Greens - both 1957, Four Suns - 1958). The disc of the sun (Red Sun, Sun Falls - both from 1958) and birds circling around the earth (Birds series, 1957-58) were often seen in these "architectural" landscapes, where one could also find some elements of Klee's (thin wire lines), as well as Miró's (free-floating patches) lyrical poetics. The hardly legible, allusive shape was quickly replaced by a completely abstract visual sign (Signs series, 1959), and the author began naming his pictures according to the order of their making: 53/61, 77/61, 12/62, etc. At the same time, the notion of anxiety won out over the original lyricism of Ziemski's paintings. Furthermore, the painterly formula was transformed: the composition became less dense, angular, splayed pools of paint were guided, as Wojciechowski stressed, with a "wide, relaxed movement".
 Varied elements became part of Ziemski's paintings at the end of the 1960s: strong broad lines, both vertical and horizontal, were contrasted with the familiar openwork, web-like relief structures. They were the harbingers of his path toward in-depth studies of Oriental calligraphy (Landscape 21/77, Landscape 44/77). In the beginning, Ziemski created these works using gouache. He then referred to them in his dramatic acrylic compositions made in the 1990s. They were different from the earlier works in their more expressive traces of violent strokes, as well as in their provocative extension of the palette of vivid, bright colours shaped in uniformly faded flat blotches (all works bear the same title: Landscape - Landscape 5/95, Landscape 4/96). Another characteristic feature of these paintings is a clash of the strong, monumental hieroglyphic sign with a delicate, quivering matter of pulsating specks of pigment..."/Text author: Małgorzata Kitowska-Łysiak, Institute of Art History, Catholic University of Lublin. Updated: August 2005.Translated by: Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer, July 2010.(culture.pl)/

Emil Schumacher - Abstract Expressionism

"Emil Schumacher, born in the Westphalian town of Hagen in 1912, began a three-year degree at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Dortmund when he was 20 years old. He started working as an independent artist in 1935 and founded the artist and exhibition association "junger westen" in 1947 together with a few other artists. The style of his work changed drastically in 1950.
He abandoned painting objects and turned towards the expressive power of painting alone. Colour itself gradually became the decisive element of his works. This biographical artistic process happened during a period, which was determined by the French École de Paris, Tachism and American Action Painting. While abstraction itself was typical of this period, it also became a typical aspect of Emil Schumacher's personal style.During the late 1960s and early 1970s Schumacher experimented with a rigorous type of action painting, which is reflected above all in his "Hammerbilder" (Hammer Paintings). The injury and damage to the picture support was to him a means of employing destruction itself as a pictorial phenomenon in art. After exhibiting at the "documenta III" in Kassel in 1964 he created extremely large works, which manifest an extreme painterly freedom. This phase lasted until the 1980s. His latest works of the 1990s, with figurative reminiscences, have clearly overcome the contrast between abstraction and the figurative.
Emil Schumacher became internationally known and praised around the middle of the 1950s as one of the most important artists of the Informel. He was awarded numerous international prizes, of which the Guggenheim Award in New York in 1958 was only the beginning. He was appointed professor at the "Hochschule für Bildende Künste" in Hamburg in the same year, accepted a post as professor in Karlsruhe in 1966 and taught as a guest professor at the university in Minneapolis/USA in 1967 for one year. The "Deutscher Bundestag" honoured him in 1998 by commissioning a mural for the Reichstag building in Berlin.
Emil Schumacher died in San José on 4 October 1999, one year after the large retrospective exhibition in Munich."(emil-schumacher.com)

Paul Feiler - German Abstract Artist

Paul Feiler ( 1918 – 2013) was a German-born artist who was a prominent member of the St Ives School of art: he has pictures hanging in major art galleries across the world.
"The artist’s abstract canvases slough off their rough surfaces, and shed chalky layers of paint, to emerge thinner, lighter and crisper than before. These paintings (in fact, they account for some 40 years of his career) seem more regimented, but also more ethereal than his earlier works. Painted in series, each follows a similar pattern: thin strips of finely graded colour are arranged along horizontal and vertical axes, and seem to recede into an inscrutable central space. .."(apollo-magazine.com)
Born in Frankfurt in 1918, Feiler was one of many talented artists who were displaced to the UK as fascism took hold in continental Europe.
His parents in 1936 moved to London: his father established himself as a dentist in Harley Street. Paul studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London 1936-1939 with artists such as Patrick Heron, Bryan Wynter and Kenneth Armitage. As an enemy alien in 1939, although thoroughly anglicised, he was interned on the Isle of Man and then in Canada. On his return to England in 1941, he was an arts teacher at Eastbourne College, which had been evacuated to Radley College in Oxford.After World War II, he taught art at the West of England College of Art in Bristol: he became the head of painting there in 1960. In 1975 he moved to the disused chapel in Kerris near Newlyn in Cornwall where he would live until his death. 

Roberto Crippa - Italian Abstract Artist

"The painter-sculptor Roberto Crippa was born in Milan in 1921. He studied at the Brera Art Academy in Milan where he was the fellow student of Aldo Carpi, d’Achille Funi and Carlo Carra. At the beginning of his career, like lots of young painters of his generation, Roberto Crippa was influenced by neo-cubism and was thus generalized. His first solo exhibition was at the Bergamini Gallery in Milan in 1947.

The artists was one of the first in Italy, to practice gestural painting, which he produced between 1948-1952 his sharply-colored spiral webs. In 1948, Crippa becomes one of the founding members of the Spacialist group, a group founded around Lucio Fontana, whose objective was to search for a new spatial representation, by technical means that was resolutely modern. From 1948 he participated regularly in group exhibitions and notably the Biennale of Venice.

Later he will devote himself to what the artist calls ‘Collages’, cut out forms that animate static surfaces. Roberto Crippa plays with the effects of matter on rough thick, surfaces, like wood or bark; the effects of plant elements or smooth or shiny metal, or transparent elements. His research naturally leads him towards sculpture and from 1956 he constructs numerous cut-out, welded metal works, of insects and monsters that are in line with the work of Chadwick. The artist is interested in movement in space; is he not he experienced airplane pilot who will represent Italy in the world aeronautic championship in 1971.Paralleling his painting and sculpture, Roberto Crippa also experiment with graphic work (engravings, lithographs, illustrated books). In the middle of the 60’s, he moves towards monochrome reliefs, most often painted in tones of gray.The artist dies in a plan crash in 1972 in Bresso. He was 50 years old."(mchampetier.com)