1963, oil on chipboard, 50 cm x 62 cm,
average looking time: 16,48 sec.

New things can be discovered only as long as one still has the creative anxiety inside.

S. Borysowski

Stanisław Borysowski was born in 1902 in Lviv. Died in 1988 in Toruń. He was a highly appreciated painter, graphic artist and educator. In 1933 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. He became a professor of painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. During his long career he used to share various fascinations. Borysowski began with landscape and still nature paintings of impressionistic spirit, but is said to have “paid attention to the colour” only under the influence of Pankiewicz, whom he met in Paris (1934-35). Colours became the central problem in his art. The time after the outbreak of war turned out very fruitful for the painter. After 1945 the nature of his works began to change. It was associated with colourism, fauvism and post-impressionism. In the early 50s he created some pictures in the spirit of real socialism. 1955 was the time of shift towards abstraction and geometrisation in his artistic work.

„K. B. Graphic” is a work created in the so-called mixed technique. It involved covering canvas with fragments of coloured paper and “elements of various forms” attached to them. His works from the 70s are typical for fantasy combination of colours and much reduced figurative elements. The graphic is actually a collage consisting of small elements arranged on one another. Great sense of form and colour are clearly visible in Borysowski’s work. Particular elements of its composition seem to complement one another, regarding both colour and shape.

The test participants focused their gaze especially on the black, largely reduced and, at the same time, delicate object situated almost in the very centre of the picture. The rest of the work surface remained hardly noticed.
The grid of gaze directions focused mainly on the part presenting the dark, abstract and perhaps a bit organic shape. Most of the changes in gaze directions were related to this element. The central fragment was also the place observed for the longest time.

The fragment shown above does not seem easy to interpret – perhaps that’s the reason why it attracted so many viewers for a longer time. The artist managed to create his work in such a way to make that delicate, fantastic and, most of all, abstract shape, attract particular attention as a puzzle hard to solve.

Each of us looks at the picture differently!

the person looking:  Ola, a pupil, 9 years old
the person looking:  Ola, a pupil, 9 years old
the person looking:  Krzysztof, a physicist, 40 years old
the person looking: Krystyna, a teacher, 52 years old
the person looking: Joanna, an artist, 66 years old

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PROJECT REALISED AS PART OF THE KUYAVIAN-POMERANIAN VOIVODSHIP MARSHALL SCHOLARSHIP
content & graphic design: Łukasz Kędziora | art collection photographs: Krzysztof Deczyński | translation and proofreading by Martyna Kowalska