Andrzej Strumillo’s abstract painting Mandala X is a bit like a dying star shooting flames–a reminder of the high modernist period, when artists believed that abstraction had the power to provide universal symbols. One of 33 recent paintings at the Society for Arts, showing with works on paper, it has a dark circle at the center surrounded by browns with a hint of red behind them. Flames seem to shoot out from all around the circle–not literal representations of fire but crusty, barklike streams that mix tan, yellow, and red.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Strumillo–a Polish artist born in 1928 who has traveled extensively in Asia and lives in rural Poland–has kept a bit of the old modernist faith. While many Western abstractionists have turned to humor, irony, and art-historical or cultural references, Strumillo in his “Mandala” series continues to ask big questions about meaning and its absence. After losing his father and “a lot of illusions” in World War II, Strumillo studied with the well-known Polish modernist Wladyslaw Strzeminski. Early on he rebelled against Strzeminski’s notion that art should be about itself by drawing his own knee, but he also writes that Strzeminski “opened my eyes for the first time” and that later in life he feels closer to his mentor’s “white silence.”
Andrzej Strumillo
Jason Rohlf
