Nikifor Krynicki

NIKIFOR KRYNICKI ( Krynica, Poland, 1895- Poland,1968).
"Rosytasetowies Powiatów".
Gouache and watercolor on cardboard.
Presents the artist's stamp on the back.
Titled in the lower area.
Measurements: 21,5 x 15,5 cm; 32 x 23 cm (frame).
Nikifor offers an intimate and poetic vision of his everyday world in this urban scene. The use of cardboard as support and the modest technique reinforce the authenticity of an artistic practice and the painter's reality.
Nikifor is one of the great referents of European naïf art. For much of his life he remained almost invisible to his time, but he ceaselessly created an extraordinary legacy of more than 40,000 works. He painted from his environment and his imagination: self-portraits and views of Krynica, where spas and Orthodox and Catholic churches become recurring scenes of a deeply personal and singular gaze.
Discovered in 1930 by the painter Roman Turyn, his work reached Paris and aroused interest among avant-garde artists, but in Poland he remained ignored for decades. The war, the forced deportation of the Lemkos and precariousness marked his fate. It was not until the 1960s, thanks to the support of the painter Marian W?osi?ski, that Nikifor gained recognition and exhibited in the country's main galleries.
He died in 1968, but his legacy grew after his death. Today his works are preserved in major museums in Poland, Europe and the United States, including the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, the Ukrainian Museum in New York and the Zander Collection in Cologne. His meticulous, intense and deeply personal art mixes the everyday with the mysterious, with a unique gaze that transforms marginality into visual poetry.