Rhythmical Lines

Grounding Vision: Waclaw Szpakowski

Gallery review, Miguel Abreu Gallery

The Paris Review

WACŁAW SZPAKOWSKI, B9, 1926, INK ON TRACING PAPER, 13 3/4″ X 15 3/4″.

WACŁAW SZPAKOWSKI, B9, 1926, INK ON TRACING PAPER, 13 3/4″ X 15 3/4″.

Audiences today may understand the meaning at the heart of Szpakowski’s project better than Rodchenko or Kandinsky ever could. The benefit of seeing art in this post-everything period is that a slew of categories—Abstract? Modernist? Minimalist? Conceptual?—can come together like a poker hand, considered in the palm all at once. When you find out that Szpakowski worked in isolation for three decades, you’re dealt another card: outsider.