Alex Greenberger remembers painter Julian Stanczak (1928 – 2017) who passed away March 25.
Greenberger writes: “Stanczak’s acrylic paintings often tended toward brightly colored shapes and grids. Typically made through contrasting unlike hues, Stanczak was able to create compositions that are jarring to the eye. They highlight the act of seeing, in the process showing that, when we look at two unlike forms put together, an unexpected element can result: movement. His paintings suggested Abstract Expressionism for an age of rapid technological innovation… For Stanczak, his work was always about color and its dramatic effects. He was a formalist at heart—a painter aware of the very mechanics behind his paintings—but one whose work had a surprising emotional undercurrent.”