Although based in Scotland, working from his studio in Edinburgh’s Dean Village, Zyw’s outlook was distinctly European. Since the war his practice developed at pace, turning his back on naturalism in favour of an expressionist language in an attempt to make sense of the new world order. A decisive moment in his post-war development as a painter, was a trip made to France and Italy in 1949. The discovery of Paul Klee and a reengagement with the School of Paris was a helpful influence, and his paintings began to move towards an intellectual abstraction, rather than purely a vehicle for emotion. This painting, dating from 1951 was exhibited at his first Paris exhibition of the same year. In it Zyw has built up the surface of the painting with layers of colour, before applying intuitive black line with a loaded brush. The hieroglyphs are freely drawn, in them animals, numbers and shapes are combined in a fretwork of graphic line which is at once ambiguous but equally compelling. The French art critic Frank Elgar described the paintings in his Paris exhibition as ‘halfway between essence and existence, these paintings seem at first illogical, arbitrary, because they escape gravity and vulgarity. But whatever the origin of their conception and the secrecy of their execution, one cannot dispute their power of fascination.’
About Aleksander Żyw
Aleksander Żyw was one of the most important émigré painters to settle in Scotland during the twentieth century, bringing to post-war Scottish art a distinctive European modernism shaped by war, exile and a lifelong engagement with the Mediterranean world. Born in Lida, Poland, in 1905, he moved to Warsaw as a child and enrolled at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts in 1926, where he received a rigorous academic training grounded in drawing and traditional painting techniques.
