Models of painterly abstraction and Strzemiński’s ‘Unist adventure’ (1923–1936)

Abstract

This essay reflects on Yve-Alain Bois’ proposition that Władysław Strzemiński’s Unist paintings and texts were ‘out of sync’. First, I consider whether Strzemiński’s writings published between 1923 and 1936 were ‘singularly consistent’, as Bois suggests. I focus on the selected untranslated mid-1930s writings, in relation to Unist Composition 14 (1934) and Seascape (1934). I proceed to flesh out the distinct ways in which Strzemiński theorized painterly abstraction at that point, in relation to synthesis of visual data, rather than formal self-sufficiency proposed earlier in Unism in Painting (1928). I draw on research by Leszek Brogowski (2001), Grzegorz Sztabiński (2006) and Paulina Korpal-Jakubiec (2010). I argue that the shift in Strzemiński’s theoretical framework illuminates his multiple pictorial outputs during the 1930s. The emerging preoccupation with vision evident in the mid-1930s texts clearly forecasts Strzemiński’s post-war work. This challenges a reading of Unist Composition 14 (1934) as the most accomplished painterly articulation of the theory of Unism. Finally, I suggest that the dual model of painterly abstraction emerging from this study is relevant to the current critical debates on abstract painting.