TOWARD
ABSTRACTION
In her painting Maja Sochaniewicz focuses on specific subjects.
The first well defined series called "Victory" was composed
of powerful, sort of archaic female figures, remote sisters of Nolde's
characters, Gauguin's beauties or Matisse's models.
The end of 70's brought series with groups of figures, scenes from
whorehouses, "dancers and ballerinas", "punks".
The situation presented on canvas acquired more descriptive precision
and a higher dose of realism without losing momentum, solid fracture
treatment, vivid colors, so typical for Maja Sochaniewicz's painting.
Even
though it never became a fact, the artist feared falling into realism
and portraying life, which was against the real spirit of her painting.
She desired more freedom and fun in "smearing paints",
as she herself calls it. Therefore, she gave up painting interiors
with figures and changed subjects, but not the atmosphere of her
artwork, always full of universal symbolism. It implied experiments
in painting techniques: painting in metal foil and large sheets
of cardboard, combining ink acrylic paints and decorative varnish.
recently Maja Sochaniewicz has also applied shiny brocades and powdered
pigments, which create the effect of velvet surfaces.
The
painting presented in this exhibition are saturated with Pan-biological
elements, symbolic and sensual at the same time. As in ancient mythology,
half human, half divine creatures p[populate this world, and they
have strong links with structured still life or studies of real
life objects. They are images completely deprived of unnecessary
external similarity.
"Angels", a motif recently favored by the artist, are
more like winged demons, carnal and subject to emotions, closer
to Assyrian myths to Christianity. Her recent works strike with
variety of matter end color combined with synthetic form, with a
desire to find a sign, a pictogram. The easily perfectible uncompromising
attitude of those austere composition, created by restless wide
movements of her brush are softened by subtlety and the choice of
color. Compared to her earlier works, with their contrasts, sharp,
even harsh at times, the art of Maja Sochaniewicz tends to nuances,
enriched by silver and gold tones.
Looking
at her paintings, we have a feeling of facing universal order, primary
and primitive in its nature, pagan in a way, where the same spiritual
element exist in a plant, an animal and a human being, and the half
divine element is equally hard to extract from the human nature
as it is hard to draw a line between what is part of humans, plants
and animals. Therefore, the photographs Maja Sochaniewicz included
in this catalog cannot be viewed just as a poetic joke, but also
as camouflaged sort of artistic credo.
In 1979 I wrote about the art of Maria Sochaniewicz - "Her
artistic temperament has clearly expressionist features. The psychological
atmosphere of violent and hot emotions hardens in wide movements
of her brush, in the sharp contrasts of 'barbarian colors'. In her
art nothing is feminine, sweet, delicate, tasteful. She is attracted
by the kitsch of a small town market combined with barbarian abundance
and dark atmosphere of passion, derived from Flaubert's 'Salambo'.
The line of her drawings is harsh, artistic matter is dense, brush
movements of varied fractural treatment are well defined up to the
limits of brutality" - that is I wrote about Maja Sochaniewicz
in 1987.
Years
later we saw each other in her Brooklyn apartment, which she also
used as a studio. I had already seen her works from the past few
years in the USA. What is a continuation of what she used to do
in Warsaw, and what is new in her art?
She
started from well defined figuration, interior scenes with female
figures. Than plants and animal turned to be the main subject. The
following stylistic changes consequently resulted from earlier periods.
It is also the case now. The artist almost give up realistic painting
in favor of abstract compositions, with noticeable fascination,
also present in her earlier works, with the world of plants and
animals as their basis.
In
the mid - 80's Maja Sochaniewicz created her own beastly world,
teasing the viewers imagination: magic snakes, exotic fish, cats
with refined movements. She also liked to paint tropical rapacious
flowers, demonic angels, mysterious shapes of pyramids. A snake,
one of her favorite motifs , has now become a silver and gold winding
strand and fish have become glittering strips. At one of her exhibitions
she presented a painting that brings about associations with some
indefinite primitive forms of biological life. Compared to her earlier
works, you can observe less rigid structure of forms , which now
create rich matter, visually 'leaking' out of the frame. This way
painting become an image of a larger part of symbolic universe.
In earlier times, looking at Maja Sochaniewicz's paintings you had
a feeling of facing universal order, pagan in its nature, where
the same spiritual element is present in a plant, an animal and
human being. This universal unity is now expressed by the unifying,
pulsating matter of her paintings.
Her artistic temperament has always had clear expressionist values.
She has been attracted by its uncompromising ideas of composition
and pure strong colors: the momentum of artistic gesture. She may
be called the pioneer of 'Neue Wilde' trend in Poland.
Neo
- expressionism, visible in the monumental female figures from the
series called "Victory", which began her artistic career,
was fully developed during in times of her contact with West Berlin,
where at the beginning of the 80's she started to present her works.
She came to the United States as an artist with clear vision of
her art and fashionable art (I mean basically the galleries in SOHO
that impose specific models) inspires herby its unique variety of
shapes and colors, ugliness and beauty, like New York itself. In
a new environment, however, I still see her as a distant sister
of pagan fairies with a touch of Witkacy's demons. She still makes
strange paint mixtures: she mixed varnish with ink and acrylic paints,
she puts color pigments and shiny brocades on metal foils. This
kind of experiments, so popular in the United States, where there
are no taboos as to techniques, in Poland have always unusual. Perhaps
the fact that Maja Sochaniewicz began to express herself by using
forms close to abstraction, not quite defined, is a result of her
reaction to the Œcomplexity of reality¹ that surrounds her in New
York. Her recent experiments aim at abstract forms that are in constant
movement. The reappearing motif of a school of fish in moving water
has a symbolic meaning.
In the interview the artist emphasized that to her it is extremely
important to portray in her art the aura of mystery and understatement.
Therefore, she is mesmerized by silent and impenetrable lives of
fish and snakes. For the same reason she is fascinated by the shape
of pyramid. She does not accepted in her art what is straight and
obvious, mechanical or logical. Painting is an element like the
ocean, which she loves to observe. The Painting of Maria Sochaniewicz
is constantly saturated with Pan-biologism an sensuality.
Kinga Kawalerowicz
Nowy
Dziennik Polish Publishing, (excerpt), 1990
