ZYW, ALEKSANDER (1905-1995)

**PRICE ON APPLICATION**
 
“Small Painting (Autumn Series)” (1957)
Oil on canvas
41 x 33cm
Signed on verso
*Hanover Gallery, London
*private collection, Melbourne
 
 Zyw was an important Polish-expat artist. He studied at the Warsaw School of Fine Art in 1926. A travel bursary in 1934 was to have a great effect on the young Pole, not only did it give him a taste for life outside of Poland, but it started a love affair with the Mediterranean which was to last a lifetime. He found himself in Corsica when the War broke out, and travelled back to his home in Paris to enlist. After the French Army's collapse Zyw escaped to Scotland to where the Polish Armed Forces were regrouping. After another spell on the front line as official war artist he settled in Dean Village in Edinburgh, before moving permanently to Italy in the 1970s. During his time in Edinburgh, he has a profound impact on the city with a number of notable exhibitions, including three with The Scottish Gallery, and later retrospectives organised by the Scottish Arts Council and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. He was one of the most important expat artists in Britain!!
 
This impressive example of early abstract expressionism was exhibited at the Hanover Gallery in London in October 1958 (no.17) alongside 3 other works from his Autumn Series (Image 2 "Light" (no.14) is in the Tate permanent collection). According to Zyw: "The series was a variation on the theme of autumn he had been working on in 1957 and at the beginning of 1958. They are ‘the precursor of the work which I am doing now and which I started not earlier than 1959. Instead of heavy impasto and elaborate surface ... the brushwork became light and more delicate and simple. Colour is applied very thinly and achieves new transparency comparable with watercolour. For the past few years I have been working in my Edinburgh studio in almost complete isolation, broken only by occasional visits to Tuscany."