Offered here for sale a beautiful original lithography hand signed by the auther 

COMPOSITION EN NOIR

Ladislas KIJNO

Artwork Description

Original engraving.

H178(340)xL127(257)mm.

Very nice proof, with good margins, on vellum paper, justified "HC" (Hors commerce) and signed in black pencil by the artist. Beautiful state of conservation.

 

Biography:

Ladislas Kijno, born in Warsaw in 1921 ; naturalized French. French mother, Claire HAZE. Father, Joseph KIJNO, Polish patriot, first prize in violin at the Warsaw Conservatory, deported to Siberia in 1905 . His parents emigrated to France in 1925 . From his childhood, Kijno drew and painted everything around him. At the age of fifteen, he was impressed by a miner's head by Edouard Pignon with whom he became friends thirty years later.

1938  : Studies philosophy in Lille. He met Jean Grenier and Gabriel Marcel who had a strong influence on him. Long stays in sanatoriums from 1942 to 1954. First exhibition in 1943 on the theme of chess games.

1945  : Active in a pacifist group close to the ideas of Gandhi and Lanza del Vasto.

As early as 1946 , Kijno experimented with the dynamic of opposition between smooth and crumpled structures: “The child is born crumpled, the adolescent becomes smooth, the old man dies crumpled. »

1947  : Thanks to his friend Claude Mary, Kijno meets Germaine Richier who advises him to devote himself definitively to painting. 1949: At the request of Canon Devémy, Kijno creates The Last Supper for the crypt of the Assy church. From this experience, his painting will shift in the direction of demiurgy, the sacred and magical resonance.

1956  : Established in Antibes. Exhibition at the Kamer gallery in Paris with Arnal, Bellegarde, Bertini, Hundertwasser and Sugaï. First studies on Fig Trees and Pebbles. He became friends with André Verdet, Nikos Kazantzaki, Hans Hartung, Alberto Magnelli, Gastaud, Luc Fournol, Jacques Damase, Roger Vivier, Audiberti… The Museum of Modern Art bought a painting. Kijno continues what he calls “the decoding of everything that had imposed itself on me as a total mystery”.

 

He met Picasso several times. The spheroid and ovoid shapes, under the influence of the egg, symbol of absolute form, for which he feels a strong attraction, lead the curved rhythms to become more and more abstract, because for Kijno "the universe is in curved expansion; energy, matter are symbolically like a ball.” René de Solier writes about Kijno: “images and signs can be rediscovered by researchers today without the slightest modernist or archaic mythology”.

1957  : Exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Antibes. Pebbles series. Research the morphological versatility of curved rhythms. Kijno is sensitive “to interferences, to the void between things”.

Unlike lyrical abstraction, he favors structured compositions in a sober palette. Uses glycerophthalic paints, with airbrush and comb dipped in ink. Undertook his classifications of pebbles by signs and shapes with René de Solier.

60s Workshop with MalouIn the 60s - Condé-sur-Vègre workshop Ladislas KIJNOLadislas Kijno - Photo Alkis Voliotis

1958  : Kijno moves to Paris. Exhibition at the Henri Bénézit gallery in Paris, of the Galets de Funchal series. The theme is The Dark Forces of the Earth with a preface by Kazantzaki. The whole thing is shocking with its refusal of aesthetics. Michel Ragon speaks of “non-descriptive naturalism”. Frank Elgar writes: “It was necessary for the artist to convey the internal quivering of matter, the tragedy of the elements, the fascinating power of chaos and still create a work of creation. He succeeded perfectly. It does not describe... it suggests, transfigures, metamorphoses natural data. »

 

Extending his metaphysical quest, Kijno is concerned with the magical rites of all civilizations, in particular those that we qualify as primitive. “You have to go see what’s inside and explode the ball. Like Tàpies, I do mental caving. Starting from the primitive forms of man, I set out to discover a new world. We are like wizards. The spectator must enter into this ritual dance. Experienced as a priesthood, a pagan liturgy, painting makes me seek the deep secret of the universe in which man lives. » “Things slip through our fingers...impossible to stay in the object: there are secret and contradictory transmissions, correlations...energy...magnetic forces...a constant coming and going; all this moves, all this cracks…and we must account for it on this small two-dimensional surface that is the canvas. »

 

In December Kijno presented 15 large crumpled papers at Bénézit (a technique he invented ten years earlier) which were very successful. Critics: Yvon Taillandier, Roger van Gindertaël… read it as a new pictorial opening.

 

1959  : Illustrations for Ascesis by Nikos Kazantzaki.

 

1960  : Moves to Condé-sur-Vègre in the Rambouillet forest. He begins the White Writings series and develops serial variations around the motif. In Paris, he created his first political graffiti on the walls of the Latin Quarter. Exhibition L'Atelier de Germaine Richier at the Galerie Creuzevault in Paris. Exhibition at the AG gallery with Laubiés, Ferro (Erro), Matta all activists against the Algerian war or Kijno presents interventions on the poems of Henri Kréa. Young French Painters exhibition in the United States presented by Bernard Dorival.

 

1961  : Exhibition at the Galerie Henri Dupont, Lille.

1963  : Meeting Sonia Delaunay. Exhibition at the Galerie Henri Creuzevault, Paris. René de Solier writes: “The problem for the artist is… to give new meanings to already existing signs. To create new signs.” “These are powerful ideograms, dynamic forms…fixed there, like emblems…” Jean-Jacques Lévêque in Arts.

1965  : Exhibition at the Noroit Center in Arras. Exhibition at the Galerie Motte, Geneva: Cosmonaut series, cup and ball and variations on jazz.

 

Start of the series The Horrible Blasons of War and Variations on Jazz.

 

1969  : Kijno begins the Beacons theme.

 

1968  : Participates in the Intellectuals' Days for Vietnam which brings together 200 painters exhibiting a painting in homage to the Vietnamese people at the Palais des Sports in Paris. May-June Kijno participates with Manessier, Singier, Soulages, Gastaud... and around one hundred and sixty painters in the formation of an artists' union.

 

1971  : Retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts in Le Havre. Angela Davis' fight inspires a new theme in Kijno.

 

1972  : Stay in Japan where he discovers the Ryôan-Ji garden and in Moscow where he discovers the icons of Andreï Rublev.

 

1973  : Tribute to Angela Davis and the Brothers of Soledad. Stays in California, Mexico and New York. Following a violent relapse in health, he was hospitalized at the Pitié Salpêtrière in Paris.

 

1975  : Beginning of the series for Neruda, Kijno definitively developed the technique of crumpling canvases developed in 1956. Exhibition Signes et Geste, 1959-1962 at the Creuzevault gallery. Exhibition of 15 painters for the magazine Exit organized by Jean-Marie Gibbal and Olivier Kaeppelin.

 

1976  : Series of Stelae for Neruda.

 

1977  : Stelae and standards for a burned forest. Exhibition at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara.

 

1978  : Series of Horrible Coats of Arms of War.

 

1980  : Venice Biennale, Kijno presents, in the central room of the French pavilion, the 30 monumental steles of the Neruda Theater.

 

1981  : Pollution or Nothing but the Death of the Tree poem by Jean-Pierre Lemesle illustrated by Kijno.

 

1982  : Exhibition The art of loving by Ovid at the Galerie Dorval, Le Touquet.

 

1983  : Stay in China with the painter Chu Teh Chun. Retrospective at the Noroit Center, Arras.

 

1985  : Return from China exhibition at the Royal Manège in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Presentation of Neruda's Theater and Riace's Variations on the Bronzes at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Dunkirk.

 

KijnoLadislas Kijno - photo Alkis Voliotis

 

Kijno and Pierre RichardKijno and P. Richard - "Expo Return from China" - Private photo Malou Kijno 1985

 

 

 

1984  : At the Théâtre d'Orange with the National Orchestra of Lille where Jean-Claude Casadesus conducts Carmen Kijno produces an important series of drawings.

 

1986  : Retrospective at the Toulon Museum. Cries and silence exhibition at the Sapone gallery, Nice.

 

1988  : Invited as part of the Atelier des Tropiques by Gilles Artur at the Gauguin Museum, Tahiti. Icons for a solar night at the Trigano gallery, Paris.

 

1990  : Kijno begins work on the large rose window of Notre-Dame de la Treille cathedral in Lille.

 

1994  : First Signs traveling exhibition in Canada with Riopelle and Chu Teh-Chun.

 

1998  : Blind Window text by Salah Stétié illustrated by Kijno.

 

2000  : Retrospective at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

 

2001  : Retrospective at the Paul Valery Museum in Sète.

 

2003  : Exhibition “Tzara, Aragon, Ponge…” Moulin de Villeneuve house Aragon/Triolet Saint Arnould en Yvelines.

 

2004  : Stations for The Way of the Cross of Love accompanied by texts by Bernard Noël.

 

2006  : Retrospective at the Château Saint-Michel, State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg. For several years Kijno has been creating cross-works with Robert Combas. Their Stations of the Cross are presented at the Chapelle Saint-Louis des Gobelins in Paris and then at the Espace Bagouet in Montpellier. Kijno offers 16 paintings to the town of Noeux-Les Mines where he spent his childhood. Hans Hartung-Ladislas Kijno exhibition, 1960s, Sapone gallery, Art Paris.

 

2012  : Exhibition Ladislas Kijno, the great works at the La Malmaison art center in Cannes.

 

Ladislas Kijno died on November 27, 2012 in his house in Saint Germain en Laye. He never stopped linking his pictorial adventure to that of poets: Tristan Tzara, Louis Aragon, Francis Ponge, Nikos Kazantzaki, Salah Stétié, Bernard Noël, François Xavier…

 

2013  : Kijno/Combas exhibition, Château de Vascoeuil. Kijno/Angela Davis exhibition at the Black & Basque Festival in Bayonne with the creation of collective graffiti in homage to Kijno by the artists of the 9th Concept.

 

2015  : Kijno retrospective at the Musée du Touquet.

 

2016  : Exhibition At the sources of Street Art: Kijno, Villeglé, Ben, Les Tournesols gallery, Saint-Etienne. Kijno: Negro Spiritual, Dorval Lille gallery.

 

2017  : The town of Saint-Germain-en-Laye asked Malou Kijno to organize a retrospective of her husband at the Manège Royal, the Espace Vera, the Media Library and the Clef.

 

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