Among the pieces acquired by the gallerist Daniel Varenne is a Detail of the French artist of polish origin Roman Opalka (1931-2011).
Record the trace of an irreversible time. This can be summed up as the work of a lifetime, that of Roman Opalka begun in the Somme a few years before the Second World War. If he is born in France, it is in Poland - in the country of his parents - that the young Roman Opalka studies.
First from 1946 to 1948 with a degree in lithography at the Wałbrzych School of Graphic Arts, then at the Łódź School of Fine Arts. Graduated in 1956 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, he became an art teacher at the House of Culture until 1960.
The serie of Chronomes, made between 1962 and 1963, is monochrome grey paintings entirely covered with millions of white signs. This is an attempt at a plastic translation of the unistinct thought of Wladyslaw Strzeminski (1893-1952), a great Polish avant-garde painter who considered each square centimeter of the painting as a work of its own. It was in 1965 that Roman Opalka decided to articulate all of his artistic creation around the inexorable flight of time.
Halfway between philosophy and visual arts, this series makes palpable the irremediable flow of a time that carries the artist and the world to their own end.
Roman Opalka (1931-2011)
1965/1, Infini Détail 1627999-1631391, 1965
Encre sur papier
33 x 24 cm
Provenance:
- John Weber Gallery, New York
- Galerie Daniel Varenne, Genève
Estimation: 40 000 / 60 000 euros
On the surface of the piece proposed by PIASA and dated 1965, the numbers between 1627999 and 1631391 are written in ballpoint pen. These innumerable canvases covered with numbers are extended by photographs and sound recordings. Taken as soon as he finishes covering the surface of his paintings, the photographs, like the one sold by PIASA in 2016 for more than 21,000 euros, are self-portraits.
