Welcome back to the Stanczak Color Quarterly, the newsletter celebrating the work of seminal Op Artist and master colorist Julian Stanczak. In this issue, we investigate a 2013 work to discern the number of colors used to create the distinctive Stanczak ‘glow.’
Read on to discover more; to hear about recent Stanczak exhibitions; and to see press coverage of the new Stanczak documentary. Plus, we highlight an exciting new international collaboration.
How many unique colors are there in Cadmium Orange, 2013? Is it 11, or is it 30? Even Julian’s family and friends had difficulty figuring it out.
Take, for instance, the small dashes linking the orange and brown squares. At first glance, the lines towards the edge of the canvas (pictured left) appear pink, while the more central dashes (pictured right) appear blue. We investigated: could the dashes be the same color throughout? To find out, read Barbara Stanczak’s essay on Cadmium Orange here.
“Julian loved to make colors do impossible things—he got a kick out of getting the most visual action out of the fewest color participants!” —Barbara Stanczak writing about Cadmium Orange
September 2022 Marked Both the American and European Premiere of the New Julian Stanczak Documentary. Julian Stanczak: To Catch the Light, by Polish documentarian Tomasz Magierski, debuted in the United States with a screening at the Cleveland Institute of Art's Cinematheque. The film had its European premiere at the Gdynia Film Festival in Poland in September 2022. Read more about the Cleveland screening here.
“If I take time to really look at what I'm seeing, there is no limit to the secrets unveiled.” —Julian Stanczak
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this email, please share it with a friend. See you in the next Color Quarterly.
Stanczak's Succession, 1980-2013, emantes light - Barbara Stanczak explains how Julian Stanczak carefully balanced 30 different colors to create the painting’s luminous effect and writes about why this work remains one of her favorites. In the essay, she details two enduring goals of Stanczak’s artistic practice: achieving “color melt-down” and “metamorphosis.”
A new essay explores how Stanczak created the warm, radiant glow of Green Light, 1973. “In Green Light, neither shapes nor colorants fight for individual recognition; rather, they are all subservient to the filtration of warm light. ” —Barbara Stanczak on Green Light, 1973. Click to read the full essay.
Welcome back to the Stanczak Color Quarterly, the newsletter celebrating the work of seminal Op Artist and master colorist Julian Stanczak. Read on to discover more about Chase, 1976–77, and to learn more about recent Stanczak exhibitions and news. Chase shows four curving columns, divided into pairs of two. The pairs appear to be painted using two different sets of colors. However, within every column, Stanczak applied the same colors in the same order—with only one exception. In a new essay, Barbara Stanczak shares the colors used (showing the original color swatch) and details Julian Stanczak's method for effecting the dramatic visual color shifts we see on the canvas.
Welcome back to the Stanczak Color Quarterly, the newsletter celebrating the work of seminal Op Artist and master colorist Julian Stanczak. This issue features a 1998 work, Low Sound. At first glance, Low Sound appears to be painted in black and white. A closer look reveals the painting's predominant color to be purple (or, to be precise, two different purples). “Low Sound looks deceptively simple upon first encounter, but the longer the viewer spends with the painting, the more they experience a number of magical touches. ” —Barbara Stanczak on Low Sound
