Lot 53. Edward Krasinski (1925-2004). Intervention, 1977. Wood fiberboard, acrylic and blue adhesive tape. Signed, titled and dated on the reverse, 100 x 70 x 12 CM – 39 3/8 x 27 1/2 x 4 3/4 in. PROVENANCE: Acquired directly from the artist, To the present owner through successive transfers. Estimate 120,000 – 180,000. Millon. 11/23/22. Sold 120,000 euro

Patrząc na drugą fotografię, ta praca Edwarda Krasińskiego jest trójwymiarowa. Czy dlatego jest tak wysoko wyceniona? Poniżej więcej o niebieskim pasku.

Considered today as one of the greatest Eastern European artists of the 20th century and a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s, Edward Krasi?ski only began to receive international recognition in the canon of post-war conceptual art in his twilight years in 2004. The blue tape, as an instrument with which he marked his territory and with which he connected object and space, and which would become his signature, dates back to the late 1960s. However, his first solo exhibition outside his country was not held until 1988 in Paris at the J&J Donguy Gallery, and much later in 2002 in New York at the Anton Kern Gallery. Although Poland was one of the most open regimes in the Eastern bloc, the international art scene was indeed unaware of what was going on behind the Iron Curtain, which no doubt explains this late recognition.
Born in 1925 in the present-day Ukraine, Edward Krasi?ski studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in the 1940s before moving to Warsaw in 1954 and beginning his career as a surrealist painter. He then met a group of artists and critics gathered around Tadeusz Kantor, a charismatic figure embodying the spirit of the avant-garde, and with whom he founded the Foksal Gallery, the main platform for conceptual experimentation in Warsaw from 1966 onwards.

His career took a decisive turn in 1968 when he used blue adhesive tape for the first time (always placed at a height of 130 CM from the ground, and nineteen millimeters wide). From the simple sticking of the tape in unusual places, he then moved on to the realization of assembly constructions that incorporated it and then concentrated on axonometric designs. Through them, Krasi?ski explores forms of geometric representation and their relationship to architectural space. The artist shared his studio with Henryk Stazewski, a key figure in the Polish avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s and a representative of the Constructivist movement. But in his work, despite the importance of line and geometric space, Krasi?ski sought to question the logic of geometry and three-dimensional space that Constructivism took for granted.
Called Interventions, his axonometric paintings trap the viewer’s eye and transcend the line. Initially flat, in the mid-1970s the artist began to add three-dimensional elements to the surfaces of his axonometries, such as frames or open cubes, which complicate their reading, implying a different point of view than that suggested by the black-and-white drawing. In Intervention (1977), these elements, placed as obstacles in the path of the blue strip, confront the lateral view of the represented structure with a frontal view of the three-dimensional work, thus multiplying the visual paradoxes and revealing the complexity and heterogeneity of the immediate environment.

The exact meaning of the tape, however, remains somewhat elusive. Indeed, the artist has remained reluctant to discuss it, commenting: “The tape gave itself a meaning. Once it was born, it was free to do anything, to run around. The meaning is inherent to the tape; I only inspired its spirit” (quoted in ‘Drôle d’interview’, Edward Krasi?ski, Les mises en scène, edited by Sabine Breitwieser, Vienna, 2006). Not needing any metaphysical meaning, it is the physical transposition of Krasi?ski’s intentions: to reduce sculpture to a single line, thus challenging the traditional forms of art and its meanings.
Considered today as one of the most significant Eastern European artists of the 20th century and a leading figure in the Polish avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s, Edward Krasi?ski only began to receive the international acclaim he deserves within the canon of postwar Conceptual art at the twilight of his life in 2004. The blue adhesive tape, as an instrument with which to mark out his territory and to connect objects and spaces, that would become his trademark, dates back to the late ’60s. However, he did not have his first solo exhibition outside his country until 1988 in Paris at Galerie J&J Donguy, and much later in 2002 in the US at the Anton Kern Gallery.