Józef Halas : monograph

Józef Halas (1927-2015) is one of the major Polish painters of the second half of the 20th century. However, his work, all produced in Wroclaw from 1949 until his death, long remained unknown outside of Poland. This unique aesthetic is given much deserved attention in essays by Michel Gauthier (curator at the Centre Pompidou, Paris) and Magdalena Howorus-Czajka (professor at the University of Gdansk).Józef Halas' work reflects a continuous quest for experimentation through series such as Oppositions, Verticals and Interiors. A distinctive "poetics of contradiction" emerges from the imposing curves of the 1960s Mountains to the violent strings of the Partitions. While Halas explores the edges of abstraction and draws on their tendency to reverie, he still makes us feel the thickness, the toughness, the depth - in a word, the reality of the raw material.Placing it in an international context, this monograph bears witness and pays tribute to an exceptional body of work and its major role in Western European and North American painting.