Color is abstract, universal, yet personal and private in experience. It primarily affects us emotionally, not logically, as do tangible things.
Julian Stanczak
Upcoming Lots Julian Stanczak
Auction Results Julian Stanczak
Alabama
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham
Arizona
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale
Arkansas
Baum Gallery of Art, University of Central Arkansas, Conway
California
Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu
Connecticut
Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport
District of Columbia
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington
National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington
Florida
Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables
Kendall Campus Art Gallery, Miami-Dade Community College, Miami
Naples Museum of Art, Naples
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach
Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando
Illinois
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champaign
Indiana
Ball State University Museum of Art, Muncie
Herron Gallery, Herron School of Art/IUPUI, Indianapolis
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis
The Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, South Bend
Louisiana
Masur Museum of Art, Monroe
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans
Massachusetts
MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester
Michigan
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo
The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor
Minnesota
Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Missouri
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City
North Carolina
Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Asheville Museum of Art, Asheville
Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
Wake Forest University Fine Arts Gallery, Winston-Salem
Nevada
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno
New Hampshire
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover
New Jersey
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair
Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton
New York
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York
University at Buffalo Art Gallery, SUNY-Buffalo, Buffalo
Ohio
Akron Art Museum, Akron
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown
Canton Museum of Art, Canton
Cleveland Artists Foundation, Lakewood
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus
Dayton Art Institute, Dayton
Kennedy Museum of Art, Ohio University, Athens
Miami University Art Museum, Oxford
Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield
Oklahoma
Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City
Pennsylvania
Allentown Art Museum, Allentown
Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Texas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio
Wisconsin
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee
Canada
Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Mexico
Tamayo Museum, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City
Poland
Centrum Sztuki Studio im Stanislawa I. Witkiewicza, Warsaw
United Kingdom
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Perfect art is an escape from the atrocity of life. It is a spiritual elevation. How do we get there? That is the question.
Julian Stanczak
Julian Stanczak 1928–2017
Born in Borowinca, Poland in 1928, Julian Stanczak’s early life was wrought with hardship. At the beginning of World War II, Stanczak was forced into a Siberian Labor camp where he lost the use of his right arm. His family fled to Tehran, where he and his father joined the exiled Polish army, Stanczak was just 14 at the time. His teenage years were spent in a Polish refugee camp in Uganda where the young artist learned to write and paint using his left hand. In Uganda, Stanczak was profoundly impacted by the grandeur of nature - the light and colors of the African sunsets and the abundant “visual energy”.
In 1950, after two years in London, his family settled in Cleveland, Ohio and Stanczak promptly enrolled in The Cleveland Institute of Art, receiving his bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1954. He studied under Josef Albers and Conrad Marcarelli at Yale University, and received his Masters of Fine Arts in 1956. In 1957, Stanczak officially became a US citizen and accepted a position at the Art Academy of Cincinnati where he would teach painting for the next seven years.
The term Op Art was coined by Donald Judd in response to Stanczak’s first major show, Julian Stanczak: Optical Paintings at Martha Jackson Gallery, in 1964 and in 1965, he participated in the Museum of Modern Art’s paramount exhibition, The Responsive Eye. Stanczak accepted a teaching position at the Cleveland Institute of Art where he would remain until 1995, and was named Outstanding American Educator by the Educators of America in 1970. In 2017, Julian Stanczak died at his home in Seven Hills, Ohio. He remains one of the most influential founders of the Op Art movement and his glowing, rhythmic paintings have been shown in exhibitions across the globe and are housed in the collections of over 90 American institutions.
In the search for Art, you have to separate what is emotional and what is logical. I did not want to be bombarded daily by the past - I looked for anonymity of actions through non-referential, abstract art.
Julian Stanczak
