Julian Stanczak Polish American, 1928-2017
Julian Stanczak was one of the most broadly influential American optical artists, working solidly in the tradition of classic Op Art painting. His meticulously taped canvases portray overlaying geometric patterns that vibrate with subtly contrasting tones. The pure, abstract shapes are saturated with color, appearing to glow and shift in response to the viewer’s location and changing light.
Active for more than fifty years, Stanczak has been exhibiting continuously since the early 1960s. He was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s The Responsive Eye exhibition of 1965 — one of the first exhibitions to define Op Art — alongside artists such as Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Princeton University, NJ, and many others.
