Julian Stanczak

Julian Stanczak
Julian Stanczak at his home in Ohio (2013)
Born	(1928-11-05)November 5, 1928 Borownica, Second Polish Republic
Died	March 25, 2017(2017-03-25) (aged 88) Seven Hills, Ohio, United States
Alma mater	Cleveland Institute of Art Yale University
Occupation	Painter
Movement	Op art, geometric abstraction
Spouse	Barbara Stanczak

Julian Stanczak (Polish: Stańczak [ˈstaɲt͡ʂak]; November 5, 1928 – March 25, 2017) was a Polish-born American painter and printmaker who is considered a central figure of the Op art movement in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s.^[1][2] Described as an artist whose work "evinced a tremendous geometric inventiveness", Stanczak is primarily known for his large-scale polychromatic abstract compositions made using acrylic paint on canvas in which he explored the perceptual dimensions of color.^[3]

Born in 1928 in Borownica, Poland, Stanczak survived a Siberian labor camp during World War II where he lost the use of his right arm. He retrained himself to paint left-handed and emigrated to the United States in 1950, where he eventually became a citizen. In 1956, Stanczak received an M.F.A. from Yale University, where he studied with Josef Albers and Conrad Marca-Relli, and was roommates with fellow abstract painter Richard Anuszkiewicz. The term "Op art", since used to describe a short-lived movement of 1960s and 1970s, originated from Stanczak's work when the Minimalist artist and sculptor Donald Judd used it in his critical review of the 1964 exhibition titled Julian Stanczak: Optical Paintings at Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. Stanczak achieved broader commercial recognition after being featured in the landmark 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

As the popularity of Op art diminished in the late 1970s, Stanczak remained active as a painter and continued to exhibit his work, but became progressively separated from mainstream contemporary art in the U.S. In addition to being a practicing artist, Stanczak served as a faculty member at the Art Academy of Cincinnati from 1957 to 1964 and, later, as Professor of Painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art from 1964 to 1995. In 2013, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. Stanczak lived and worked in Seven Hills, Ohio with his wife, the sculptor Barbara Stanczak, until his death in 2017. His work is included in permanent collections of museums in North America and Europe.