Chronology

1962

March
He travelled to Washington at the invitation of the Institute of Contemporary Art. He visited American universities and art schools, giving lectures on spatial art and presenting his works. During his stay in New York, he met important art critics and curators such as Clement Greenberg and William Rubin.

April
Fangor’s solo exhibition was held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Washington as an event accompanying the “Fourth Annual Congress”, during which the artist also gave a lecture entitled “American Style & European Painting”. Fangor concluded an agreement with Beatrice G. Perry, under which he was provided a regular salary for showing thirty paintings a year at the Gres Gallery. It was owing to this arrangement that he was able to move to France, where he lived in the studio at pl. Jules Ferry 44 in Montrouge by Paris. At the time, he had close relations with some Polish artists living in Paris, including Jan Lenica, Alina Szapocznikow and Roman Cieslewicz.

1963

26 January–17 February
Collective works created over the previous couple of years in the Artistic Research Unit of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, such as designs for Expo 58 in Brussels and the Start Sports Complex in Warsaw, as well as documentation of Fangor and Zamecznik’s installation in front of the building of Zachęta from 1961, were shown at the Exhibition of Applied Arts from the cycle “Polish Art on the 15’h Anniversary of the Polish People’s Republic” at the CBWA.

December
He participated in the “Rencontre internationale des artistes” at the Musee des Oudaias in Rabat.

1964

10 January–10 February
The artist participated in the poster exhibition “Venti anni di manifesto artistico polacco moderno” at the Calcografia Nazionale in Rome.

26 January–29 March
Curator Lawrence Alloway displayed Fangor’s painting “Black Wave” (1961) at the group exhibition Guggenheim International Award in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

5–29 February
Fangor’s solo exhibition was organized at the Galerie Lambert in Paris. In the small space of the gallery, on one of the walls, Fangor made an installation from his abstract paintings created in 1963. He arranged ten paintings of equal size in two rows, one by one, with the upper row, reaching the ceiling, tilted from the top to the floor by 35 degrees.

12 June–19 July
Fangor’s solo exhibition was held at the Stadtisches Museum Leverkusen Schlosss Morsbroich. At the invitation of director Udo Kultermann, Fangor made an installation from his abstract paintings created in 1963 and 1964. It was for the first time that he showed pre-pressed structures made from curved hardboard painted white, blue, green and red. They were installed in a park. In the introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition, Udo Kultermann wrote:
“Fangor belongs to the few artists in the world for whom the traditionally determined boundaries between architecture, sculpture and painting are no longer in place. His work in an important, not yet known in Germany, contribution to the basic. New discussion on spatio-artistic relations. The structures created for the exhibition in Park Morsbroich, as well as the exhibition of paintings, designed accord to the artist’s guidance in museum space, are important manifestos, which should be closely studies both by artists and commissioners in the area of architecture and artistic integration in Germany”.

The same year, the artist received a grant from the Ford Foundation, which enabled him to live and create in Berlin.

1965

23 February–25 April
A pioneering exhibition presenting world kinetic art and op-art “The Responsive Eye” was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As part of it, curator William C. Seitz, who saw Fangor’s exhibition at the Galerie Lambert in Paris, showed his painting “N 17” from 1963. Later the same year, the exhibition was also presented at the City Art Museum of St. Louis (20 May–20 June 1965), Seattle Art Museum (15 June–23 August 1965), Pasadena Art Museum (25 September–7 October 1965) and Baltimore Museum of Art (14 December–23 January 1966).

24 April–14 May
A solo exhibition was staged at the Galerie Wilm Falazik in Bochum–Fagor also designed a poster with his signature for it.

26 June–26 July
The artist participated in the exhibition “Wojciech Fangor, Ruth Francken, Gerard Koch, Mercedes Kruschewsky. 2 Maler + 2 Bildhauer als Gäste der Ford Foundation in Berlin” at the Amerika Haus in Berlin, where he presented a spatial composition composed of three free-standing, painted, pre-pressed structures and three spatial paintings with openings in the curved hardboards monochromatically painted in primary colours.

31 July–31 August
He participated in International Artists’ Seminar 1965: Optical Art Symposium in Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. The accompanying exhibition was also presented at the Riverside Museum in New York (26 September–7 November).

October
Fangor’s solo exhibition with his paintings dating to 1963-1965 was held at the Galerie Springer in Berlin.

17 October
The artist married Magdalena Patkowska in Warsaw. In the autumn, owing to a recommendation of painter William Scott, he was employed for six months as a teacher of painting in the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, Wiltshire, UK. Several days a week, he painted in London, in a studio Stefan Knapp made available to him. He entitled the paintings created during this time “E” for England, in contrast to the ones painted earlier, in Berlin, entitled “B”.

1966

The artist showed paintings created in the years 1963-1965 during several solo exhibitions in Germany: in Wiirttembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart (6 February–6 March), Galerie Leonhart in Munich (6 July–27 August) and Dom Galerie in Cologne (9 September–22 October).

29 March–22 April
His solo exhibition was held at the London-based Grabowski Gallery run by Mateusz Grabowski, an art lover and collector promoting mainly the art of British artists of the younger generation.

6 April–12 June
The artist took part in the exhibition Recent Acquisitions at the Museum of Modem Art in New York

June
He was granted an immigration visa to the USA.

1 September
He was employed with the Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey, as a profesor of painting, and continued to work there until 1983. He took up residence in a building formerly housing a theatre, which he converted into his house and studio. He commenced cooperation with the Galerie Chalette in New York, run by the married couple Madeleine Chalette and Arthur Lejwa.

1967

March-May
During his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Chalette in New York, the artist presented not only his paintings from recent years, but also a model of an installation of wavy, self-supporting walls and “Mobius Strip” (1966) made from glued wooden slats.

28 June–24 September
His work was shown at the exhibition “The 1960s: Painting & Sculpture from the Museum Collection” at the Museum of Modem Art in New York.

27 October 1967–7 January 1968
The artist participated in the “Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture” the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, where he showed three pre-pressed structures. They were he showed three pre-pressed structures. They were he showed three pre-pressed structures. They were and concave structures organized space through their form and colour.

Since 1967, Fangor taught painting and graphic arts at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1968

13 April–30 June
The painting E 10 (1966) was shown at the exhibition “L’art vivant 1965-1968″ at the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.

18 June–28 September
He participated in the 100 the Exhibition at the Grabowski Gallery in London.

22 June–20 October
His painting “NJ 15” (1964) was exhibited at the “Linee della ricerca: dall’informale alle nuove strutture” during the 34th Venice Biennale.

1969

25 January–1 March
Fangor’s solo exhibition featuring a model of a monument for Jerusalem (1968) was held at the Galerie Chalette in New York. Under the project, self-supporting curtain structures were to be made from thin concrete walls covered with glass mosaic in colours edgelessly transforming from white to blue. Despite advanced technological preparations, the project has not been executed.
The Fangors bought a farm in Lutheranville near Summit, New York. They lived in Madison during the winter months, and in the country in the summer.
The artist signed his paintings depending on the place in which they were finished: most often “M” or “MA” for Madison, “SU” for Summit or “SM” for both these places, and added subsequent numbers in the following years.

November
He participated in a group exhibition “Four New Jersey Artists: Fangor, Leon Kelly, Anthony Padovano, Esteban Vincente, presenting works of artists from the region at the Newark Museum.

1970

7 February–1 April
The third solo exhibition at the Galerie Chalette in New York was held. A reviewer from the New York Times wrote about it in the following way:
“He is the great romantic of pop art, working not by rule but by a combination of intuition and experiment, appealing not to reason but to our yearning toward the mysterious. As the purely visual novelty wears off, the optical trick turns out to have been more than a trick after all, and is revealed as a portal opening on to new experiences of color in space” (John Canaday)

19 March–30 April
He presented paintings at the “Berliner Kunstlerprogramm Ausstellung Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst” in the Goethe Institut in Berlin.

4 May-7July
He participated in the exhibition “American Painting 1970”, curated by Peter Selz, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.

27 September–25 October
The artist took part in the exhibition “Color: Theme and Variations” at the Morris Museum of Art and Sciences in Moristown, New Jersey.

30 October 1970–10 January 1971
He participated in the “Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Art” at the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, in Pittsburgh.

16 November 1970–10 January 1971
He took part in the exhibition “Excellence”, curated by Peter Selz, at the Berkeley Art Museum.

18 December 1970–31 January 1971
His solo exhibition was held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and was subsequently shown at the Modem Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas (4 April–9 May) and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley University (6 July–22 August).
The exhibition presented paintings from the years 1965-1970, mostly large-format canvases displaying abstract figures pulsating with colour, which matched the space of the interior of the building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Magdalena Dabrowski described the event as follows:
“The spiral form of Guggenheim’s ramps seemed to be made for the exhibition of his works. The architecture and the paintings fitted one another organically. Hence, the eye of the viewer standing in the center of the main rotunda on the ground floor glided down the vibrating colourful spaces of the ramps, arranged on different levels. Creating a sense of an interior filled with various vibrating colours […]. The colour and the space permuted each other sometimes delicately, and sometimes aggressively, creating unexpected effects”.
The exhibition was acclaimed by the public and critics alike:
“His paintings might be classified as being both optical and color-field, but this is hardly adequate in describing their total effect. In point of fact, the works is an extraordinary exploration into the properties of colour, light and space, which in his hands turn into violently hypnotic and mesmerizing experiments. The achievement lies in Fangor’s uncanny ability to make his colour pulsate ways that make it almost painful to look at. The soft-focus vibrations that impinge themselves on the eye cause his colours to dissolve and move with a heavy force toward alternate areas of any given canvas. The resulting shifts of space and light are, as stated, blinding. But once used to the effect, the eye adjusts to the basic harmonic structure of his abstract shapes (mainly amebic or circular) and the final product emerges as a dazzling and quite beautiful lesson in the creation of optical art at its profoundest and most lyrical” (John Gruen)

1971

21 October–23 November
Fangor participated in an exhibition with Richard Anuszkiewicz and George Segal at the College Vaughn-Eames Hall in Newark State College in New Jersey.

1973

February 1973–March 1974
He took part in the exhibition Curators Choice in New Jersey State Council on the Arts with Richard Anuszkiewicz, Walter Darby Bannard, Clarence H. Carter, John Civitello and Oscar Magnan.

May
A premiere performance of “Mendicants of Evening”, a ballet choreographed by an outstanding dancer and teacher, Martha Graham, at the Alvin Theater in New York. Fangor designed stage sets with a dispersed circle and several ramps, which won very good reviews in the press. The ballet was also staged in 1974 as a “Chronique” at the Theatre Playbill in New York.

3–17 June
He presented works on paper at the Summit Art Center in Summit, New Jersey.

Since 1975 till 1976 he created a cycle of paintings referred to as “interfacial”, which the artist entitled “IS” (an acronym for Interfacial Space), adding subsequent numbers. This is what he wrote about the cycle several years later:
“In the mid-seventies, I created figural paintings exploring the topic of the mental space emerging upon the meeting of two people. A contact between two individuals causes specific changes in the picture of each of the duet’s participants and a change in the meaning of the space between them. This space ceases to be dividing and indifferent, and becomes connecting and engaged. Strange relations occur between observed and the observing and the other way round. Both these parties deform each other. I called this cycle of painting interfacial spaces”.

1977

He created a cycle of paintings inspired by the television screen. They were devoted to the topic of the tension between the sociocultural content and the activity of the screen, exuding its own light, with visual distortions resulting from the technology. This is what Fangor himself wrote about this cycle:
“Having come to the USA, I found myself in the world increasingly based on electronic communication. The television, which is an ersatz of direct interpersonal relationships, became a wonderful field for the play between the natural electro-optical effects and the cultural- mythical stream flowing from it”. (Fangor, 1990)

1979

The Fangors moved from Madison to a loft at 96 Grand Street in Manhattan, New York. The artist received an award from the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation.

1980

July
Together with his wife, Magdalena Shummer, he made a drawing of a whale from paper towels, measuring 128 x 187 m, on a hill near Summit. A photograph of this work was included in Greg Gatenby’s book “Whales. A Celebration”. The proceeds from the sale of this book were donated to a whale rescue project.

November
On the initiative of his friend Ewa Pape, a collector and promoter of Polish art in the USA, and as a commission from an industrial tycoon Edmund Thornton, he made a spatial composition “Giants” in a park belonging to Ottawa Silica Company in Illinois. Sculptures of three more than 3 meters high heads made from steel sheet symbolized three generations of entrepreneurs, while the crude material of the works was a reference to elements symbolizing the mining industry.

1981

The artist was making preparations for an exhibition in Poland scheduled for the following year. The martial law introduced on 13 December made its execution impossible.

1983

Fangor retired and moved permanently from New York to his house in Summit. He converted his house and studio, and constructed–only with the help from his friends–a wooden astronomical observatory 265 cm in diameter. He also kept in close contact with Jerzy Soltan, who owned a summer house nearby. He showed his television paintings at the Bodley Gallery in New York.

1984

29 March–21 April
He participated in the exhibition “Synthetic Art”, presenting artists connected with the Harm Bouckaert Gallery in New York.

1987

21 November–30 December
His paintings were shown at the exhibition “Polnische Malerei 1945-1986i” in the Wiesbaden Museum in Germany.

1988

He received the first prize in a competition for a poster celebrating the 70 th anniversary of the restoration of Poland’s sovereignty. At this time, he created a series of paintings inspired by the “Life” magazine. The paintings on the topic of reportage photographs of well-known individuals and news from colourful magazines, were created on canvas with photographical accuracy in the form of a collage.

1989

April
His paintings were presented at the exhibition “Amerykańska kolekcja Studio. Donacja artystów amerykańskich i Ewy Pape” at the Galeria Studio in Warsaw.
The Fangors sold the farm in Summit and moved to Santa Fe in New Mexico. It was here that Wojciech finished his cycle of 36 expressively painted portraits of “Polish Kings”, inspired by Jan Matejko’s “Gallery of Polish Kings and Princes”. In response to a growing interest in his works in Poland, Fangor decided to donate more than one hundred of his paintings and drawings to the Polish nation. Along with the organization of a retrospective exhibition, he made it a condition that they be passed on to the Fundacja Kultury Polskiej provided a place for their permanent display was found. The paintings were deposited with the District Museum in Radom. After a dozen or so years of fruitless efforts, the artist gifted his paintings to the museum and took back the remaining ones.

1990

1-28 October
A retrospective exhibition “Wojciech Fangor- 50 Years of Painting” was held at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art. Along with paintings and drawings from the years 1940-1990 and a selection of posters from the period 1954-1962, the artist created a spatial composition composed of a drawing of a whale on the wall and pre-pressed structures referring to its shape. The installation was described on the wall of the gallery in the following way: “Glory to the Sea Whales, the Zameczniks and Ociepka’. The catalogue of the exhibition featured a fragment of a text by the Director of the Guggenheim Museum, Thomas M. Messer, summarizing the artist’s achievements:
“And even in the work of recent years in which non-objective abstraction gives way to recognizable subject matter, the latter still attempts to determine the implication of the spaces that separate the object viewed from the pair of eyes and the minds that view it. It is not by chance that the television image, in itself a mere projection, should now become the artist’s reference in his consistent efforts to signify what is real. Fangor’s paintings are as easily liked as they are easily misunderstood. For theit appeal, far from being the result of a decorative intent, is rooted in an intellectually demanding search whose traces have been eliminated” (Thomas M. Messer)
The exhibition was extensively reviewed in the press, and Franciszek Kuduk’s documentary “Fangor. Pół wieku malowania” (1991) was made as a result as well.

1992

A cycle of twelve paintings “Indian Chiefs” was created. On the basis of historical photographs and prints, Fangor painted busts of Indian chiefs, on which, in the foreground, he arranged simplified logotypes resembling the seals of well-known industrial, financial and telecommunication companies. The intervention of logotypes deepened the sense of spatiality of the images, but was also an expression of a transformation of the society and a critique of corporate culture. This is what, several years later, the artist wrote about the cycle:
“The construction of these paintings is based on a contrast between the illusive reality and the tangibility of a symbolic sign. We are also dealing here with a contrast between the illusory negative space and the surface of the image disclosed through the sign which lies on it. In many paintings, starting with the series of television ones, I used a similar contrast between an illusion of spatial reality and the reality of the surface expressed by a raster of dots, etc.”. (Wojciech Fangor, 2015)

1993

20 February–3 April
The Mitchell Algus Gallery in New York held an exhibition “Target Paintings”. The artist’s first solo exhibition in New York since his show at the Guggenheim Museum presented his abstract paintings from the period 1965-1970. He started creating paintings showing chairs.

1994

10 June–20 July
Covering paintings from the 1960s and 1980s, the exhibition “Wojciech Fangor. Obrazy z kolekcji ofiarowanej przez artystę narodowi polskiemu” was held at the Contemporary Art Museum in Radom, a unit of the Jacek Malczewski District Museum.

1995

17 January–20 February
A solo exhibition was held at the Galeria 72 in the District Museum in Chelm, curated by Bożena Kowalska. In April, the show was presented at the Galeria Stara BWA in Lublin.

August-December
Fangor participated in a cycle of lectures and workshops for students, organized by Cleveland Institute of Art at the Lacoste School of the Arts in southern France.

1996

5-15 September
He took part in the 14th Outdoor Painting Workshop for Artists Using the Language of Geometry at Okuninka. The event was organized cyclically by Bożena Kowalska, who invited Fangor to many outdoor workshops and exhibitions devoted to geometrical art including the exhibition “Piękno–kategoria przebrzmiała?” at the Galeria 72 in Chełm (15 September–15 October 1997) and the exhibition “Język geometrii II” at the Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej BWA in Katowice, which was subsequently shown at the Galeria El in Elbląg (27 October–3 December 2000).

1997

14 June–12 October
The artist participated in the project “Circles of Divinity: Cross Cultural Connections” in the Auckland Art Museum, University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

1998

He was invited to participate in a competition for a design of billboards expressing the idea of the road, which were to be put up along Interstate 25 crossing the desert in New Mexico. The artist designed the installation “Vehicle”, composed of four panels presenting different ways of transportation: a foot, a horse’s hoof, a wheel and the name of the road 01. He won the competition, but the project has never been executed.
In the same year, Fangor also created a cycle of works on paper “Signatures” in which he placed his own surname, using his flagship painting media. The works were subsequently sealed by a notary public in Santa Fe, confirming the authenticity of the signature. In this way, he underlined the significance of the artist’s signature as an object of art.

1999

April
The Fangors moved to Poland. After several months of searching for an appropriate house, they bought a neoclassicist palace at Wilków, and began to restore it to its former glory. After a year of troublesome renovation, they sold it and moved to a mill adapted to become a place to live and a studio in Błędów.

2001

14 May–30 June
A solo exhibition at the Galeria Stefana Szydłowskiego in Warsaw began a long cooperation with Stefan Szydłowski, an art dealer and critic, who curated Fangor’s many shows and wrote many texts devoted to him. Bożena Kowalska published the artist’s first monograph entitled “Fangor. Malarz przestrzeni”.

October-December
The exhibition “Fangor. Impresje polskie – impresje amerykańskie” at the Pulaski Museum in Warka presented the artist’s two cycles of paintings: “Polish Kings” and “Indian Chiefs”.

2002

10 March–7 April
Fangor participated in the project “Collecting Contemporary Art: A Community Dialogue” in the Auckland Art Museum, University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. On this occasion, his paintings were shown at the exhibition Eye in the Sky: Visions of Contemporary Art from Ackland Collection (9 April–16 September).

5 April
Galeria Rogatka in Radom opened an exhibition showing the paintings from the cycle “Chairs” (1993-1994) as well as the chairs being the models for the canvases themselves.

13 April–26 May
The artist participated in the exhibition “Polish Art 1955-1985″ in Southern California Collection at the Fullerton Museum of Art, California State University at San Bernardino.

21 June–28 July
A solo exhibition “Wojciech Fangor. Malarstwo, rysunek, formy przestrzenne” was held at the BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Katowice. It was prepared by Bożena Kowalska in collaboration with Zbigniew Kamieński and Mieczysław Szewczuk.

2003

16 September–26 October
Wojciech Fangor’s retrospective exhibition was prepared at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw in cooperation with Piotr Zamecznik. It was curated by Milada Ślizińska.
Apart from his paintings from the last 40 years, Fangor presented “Pillars”, prepared especially for this exhibition. The sculptures were made from 250 cm high cardboard-plaster pipes with the diameter of 60 cm, halved lengthwise. They had mirrors inside them, at the base. The external side of the pillars, with representations of female figures in the forms of dots and dashes, contrasted with their morose interior with its painted skeleton figures. The artist placed 13 June–3 October his cycle of paintings “Indian Chiefs” inside a room constructed to resemble a tepee. The viewers could look at them only from the outside. He also showed “paintings with obstacles”, behind a crate.
The artist himself recollected the exhibition in the following way:
“While preparing the exhibition at the Ujazdowski Castle in 2003, I decided to design a system that would sharpen and disclose the process of the viewer’s perception of the view of an immovably hung paintings, at a small distance from them, which disturbed the normal viewing of the work. Only figurative paintings with illusive spaces inside them were fit for the purpose. Due to parallactic movements, the grilel before the paintings would disclose and condition the space between the viewer and the painting with the slightest movement of the viewer”.

2004

27 March–27 May
Fangor’s paintings were shown at the group exhibition “Kolekcja Dariusza i Krzysztofa Bieńkowskich” in the Contemporary Sculpture Museum in Orońsko.

13 June–3 October
His paintings were presented at the exhibition “Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s-70s”, in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which was subsequently transferred to the Miami Art Museum (18 October 2004–1 May 2005).

20 November 2004–30 January 2005
He participated in the exhibition “Warszawa – Moskwa I Moskwa–Warszawa 1900-2000” at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw; it was later shown at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (March 2005).

2005

Since 2005 artist created a series of works entitled “Palimpsest”. He used the drawings he had made since the 1940s, portraits, still lifes and landscapes. He printed them after enlargement- initially on paper, then directly on canvas, and he subsequently glued pieces of colourful paper or painted geometrical figures onto them.

9 kwietnia–22 maja
A solo exhibition Wojciech Fangor. Exhibition of the Exhibition at the Polish Sculpture Centre at Orońsko was prepared in cooperation with Piotr Zamecznik. It was curated by Mariusz Knorowski. Stefan Szydłowski described it as follows:
“Wojciech Fangor decided to introduce a dozen or so forms from hardboard, maintaining its natural colour, to this space. These forms resemble a new “architecture” structures freshly defining the encountred space, becoming points of reference, something, which leaves and determines the space between. It is this “between” which becomes a place to be filled, played upon. Here it becomes a scene to which the actors of the show are ushered – silhouettes of people of art, painters, directors, curators, critics, the artist’s old and new acquaintances, attendees of his exhibitions, cut out from the polystyrene foam with cardboard glued and painted on it. It seems that it is a freeze-framed shot. A pictured moment, with the atmosphere of an exhibition constructed from real and unreal elements polished in the artist’s memory and imagination”. (Stefan Szydłowski)
The exhibition was also shown at the Reszel Castle Gallery, a unit of the Museum of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn (April 2005).

22 September–29 October
An exhibition of spatial installations “Structures”, prepared by Stefan Szydlowski, was held at the Galeria XX1 in Warsaw.

26 November–31 December
Fangor presented a series of palimpsest collages made on his enlarged drawings glued onto panels at the Galeria Stary Browar in Poznań. In reaction to the encountered space of the renovated brewery, he also made a site-specific installation from the mirrors arranged on a platform, which reflected the arrangement of lighting in the restored historical brewery.

2006

27 October- 18 November
A solo exhibition “3 Dimensions” was held at the Winda Gallery of Contemporary Art in the Cultural Centre of Kielce.

2007

In 2007, at the invitation of the architect Andrzej Chołdzyński, Fangor participated in designing seven stations and an entry to the second line of the Warsaw underground. He proposed that entries to the underground be provided with a roof in the shape based on the letter M. He also designed inscriptions in simplified form, written in colourful italics, which was to highlight the direction of the movement of the train, on the station walls behind the tracks. His design won the competition, but during the execution, the investor decided to change the painted steel panels to glass ones and partially hide the walls with advertising billboards. Fangor defended his original design in court. As a result of a compromise agreement, he personally supervised its execution in collaboration with Daniel Wnuk. On 12 June 2012, prototypes of the panels together with the documentation were presented at an exhibition at the Galeria XX1 in Warsaw. The underground stations were opened on 8 March 2015.

31 May–31 July
A solo exhibition “Wojciech Fangor. Works on Paper in Colour” was held at the aTAK Gallery in Warsaw. The exhibition, prepared in cooperation with Piotr Zamecznik, presented drawings from the period 1948-2006, which were displayed on the walls and on a structure with concave walls erected in the center of the room. Fangor also designed a catalogue of the exhibition–it had the form of a book mock-up with miniature drawings of all the works. The catalogue received the award of the Polish Society of Book Publishers.

June-July
An exhibition of Fangor’s works from the 1960s and 1970s from Wojciech Fibak’s collection was held at the Fibak Collection Gallery in Warsaw.

1 June–31 August
An exhibition “Wojciech Fangor, Andrzej Rysiński, Defragmentation” was organized at the Szydłowski Gallery in Warsaw. It was subsequently shown at the Book and Graphic Arts Centre in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

20 April
The exhibition “Zestaw wystaw. Wojciech Fangor, Magdalena Shummer” was opened in the fire station in Błędów. Fangor was an active member of the local community of Błędów. Among his other contributions, he designed a standard for the Complex of Schools of Polish Olympic Game Champions in Błędów Volunteer Fire Brigade on the occasion of the 90^th anniversary of its brass orchestra (2009).

2008

5 July
A spatial signature Fangor was shown in the Sculpture Park in the Polish Sculpture Centre at Orońsko. During the vernissage, the artist was decorated with the Golden Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis. The following year, he received the Cyprian Kamil Norwid Award for this work.

2009

19 March–19 April
The artist took part in the exhibition Enter/Escape. How Painting Shapes New Spaces in the Castle of Pomeranian Dukes in Szczecin.

24 April–14 June
His paintings were shown at the exhibition “Collection of Events. Art Exists Outside of Image. From the Collection of Dariusz Bieńkowski”, held at the Atlas Sztuki gallery in Łódź.

10 June–13 September
Fangor’s paintings were presented at the exhibition “Tom Slick: International Art Collector” at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas.

25 September–15 November
The artist’s solo exhibition was held at the Atlas Sztuki gallery in Łódź. Apart from paintings from the 1960s and 1970s, Fangor presented the installation “January 1945”- a life-sized Styrofoam Soviet tank with its crew. The installation referred to the artist’s feelings connected with the experience of the end of the Second World War. On the one hand, the liberation finished the terror and annihilation of the war, but on the other, it brought fear of the new totalitarian system.

2010

Between 2010 and 2015, Fangor made several steel sculptures painted with automotive paint, which were to be displayed outdoors, including “Spatial Structure” (2010), “Fiery Bird” (2012), “Wave” (2012) and “Grace” (2015).

13 January–27 February
A solo exhibition “Wojciech Fangor. Palimpsest” as held at the aTAK Gallery in Warsaw.

30 January–21 March
The artist took part in the exhibition “Escape: Polish Art in the Communist Era” in the Laband Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.

September
The solo exhibition “Television Paintings”, organized at the Stefan Szydłowski Gallery in Warsaw.
At the exhibition “The Space Between Us” devoted to Stanislaw Zamecznik and held in the seat of the Association of the Polish Architects in Warsaw, the artist executed a spatial signature “Hommage a Zamecznik”, made from white-painted steel. It was displayed in the garden. In the years to come, he created a further two spatial signatures: “Starak” (2014), devoted to the collector and patron of the arts Jerzy Starak, and “Magda” (2015), dedicated to his own wife.

2011

Fangor received the Commander’s Cross with the Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta. The exhibition “Poster from the Collection of Piotr Dąbrowski” was held at the Galeria Test.

2012

At the exhibition The Smolensk Monument, documenting the international competition for the development of a concept of a monument commemorating the victims of the plane crash, which took place on 10 April 2010 near Smolensk, Fangor and Daniel Wnuk presented two joint designs in the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Orońsko.

20 October 2012–06 January 2013
A retrospective exhibition “Wojciech Fangor. Space as a Game” in the National Museum in Krakow was prepared to mark the artist’s 90th birthday and his 751h creative work anniversary. On the occasion, an extensive catalogue prepared by the curator of the exhibition, Stefan Szydłowski, was published.

2013

The artist designed a stained-glass window in rainbow colours for the building of Museum Jerke in Recklinghausen, Germany. The museum was opened in April 2016.

11-28 June
A solo exhibition “Wojciech Fangor Drawings 1947-1957″ was held at the Galeria XX1 in Warsaw, displaying Fangor’s drawings discovered after many years in the studio at Pankiewicza Street.

2014

15 February–15 June
Works from the collection of Grazyna Kulczyk were shown at the group exhibition “Everybody Is Nobody for Somebody” at the Fundacion Banco Santander in Madrid.

6 March–25 July
An exhibition “Wojciech Fangor. Spectra Art Space Masters” at the Spectra Art Space in Warsaw presented the artist’s works from the collection of Anna and Jerzy Starak and the spatial signature Starak.

30 June–13 September
A retrospective exhibition “Wojciech Fangor Memories of the Present” was held at the National Museum in Wroclaw. It was curated by Stefan Szydłowski.

10 December–09 January 2015
The solo exhibition “Colour Light Space” at 3 Grafton Street in London presented the artist’s paintings from the 1960s and 1970s, originating from private collections. It was organized by Kasia Kulczyk in collaboration with Simon and Michaela de Pury.

2015

Fangor designed a poster for the exhibition “Magdalena Więcek. Affectingt the Eye” in the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw.

13 October
He received an honorary doctorate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk. At the Gdansk Academy, the occasion was marked by the first edition of the Wojciech Fangor National Student Painting Competition under the patronage of the Fangor Foundation and the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk. The artist could not participate in the ceremony for health reasons. In a message expressing his gratitude, he wrote as follows:
“Taking this opportunity, I would like to share my experience and observations as a visual artist. Art is not to be practiced in pains and torments. Creativity is tantamount to desire leading to ecstasy. The desire does not come from the head. It is not a conscious decision. It originates in the intestines, in what the Anglo-Saxons call the guts. The head is a tool rather than the source of desire. […] We need the mind when selecting the technology, the tools, the material, but also the topic which is an excuse for the construction of the work. Every work has a topic which can be interpreted – be it the “Battle of Grunewald” or “Black square”. There are no good or bad topics. Quality is an attribute of the content, and the content is not interpreted, but experienced. The content does not result from the topic, but from the structure and the cumulative impact of visual contrasts. The content contains the author’s genes, the scent of time and the culture connected with time. Thank you very much once again for this honor. I wish you luck, successes, desire and ecstasy”.

The Tri-City hosted several exhibitions presenting the artist’s works from various periods and areas of his oeuvre: “Fangor Painting” in the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk (6-11 October); “Fangor Television Painting” in Gdynia Film Centre in Gdynia (6 October–3 November); “Fangor. Posters” in Zatoka Sztuki in Sopot (October); “Fangor. Hevelius” in the State Gallery of Art in Sopot (6 October–8 November). The latter exhibition presented a cycle of paintings inspired by the Gdansk astronomer’s prints, which were prepared especially for this occasion.

14-18 October
The exhibition “Wojciech Fangor. Six Works from the Sixties” was organised during the Frieze Masters in London by the Mayor Gallery in London.

25 October
Wojciech Fangor died in Józefów and was buried on 3 November in the Military Cemetery at the Powązki in Warsaw.

Edited by Katarzyna Jankowska-Cieślik
Text originally published in the catalogue “Fangor. Beyond the Painting”, Muzeum Narodowe w Gdańsku, 2022