Caziel attended the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from 1931 to 1936, where the influence of the French Post-Impressionist movement was omnipresent. Revered masters amongst the students, and significant influences on Caziel’s early development as a painter, included Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse. Many works from this period show a clear Cézannesque approach in both technique and colour, while his Fauvist ballet designs evoke the spirit of Matisse’s La Danse (1910). In many of his Polish-period works, Caziel combined the Post-Impressionist vocabulary with imagery and stylistic elements drawn from Polish folklore, which he greatly admired.
Caziel’s aspirations to emigrate to Paris were realised in 1937, when he received a bursary. In 1939, Édouard Vuillard intervened with the Polish authorities to help secure Caziel’s permission to remain in Paris.
When Germany declared war in 1939, Caziel voluntarily joined the Polish army in France. Following the Franco-German Armistice of 1940, the Polish army was disbanded, forcing Caziel to flee with his Jewish wife, the painter Lutka Pink. They were welcomed in Aix-en-Provence by Blaise Cendrars, where they stayed on and off until autumn 1946. During this time, Caziel studied Cézanne’s work in depth, paying tribute to the master in a series of nudes marked by strong contour lines, unusual depth and perspective, and a simplified colour palette. He also followed Cézanne in making Mont Sainte-Victoire the subject of a series of small oils.
While in Aix, Caziel met Le Corbusier, with whom he exchanged ideas about the integration of painting and architecture. Caziel’s instinctive feeling for proportion had already earned him several prestigious commissions for frescoes in Poland. Upon his return to Paris in 1946, he was commissioned to design the Polish pavilion for the UNESCO International Exhibition of Modern Art.
Despite appealing offers of important teaching posts from the Polish government, Caziel remained in Paris to protect Lutka from returning to the country where all her relatives had been murdered at Auschwitz. Life in post-war Paris was hard, but Caziel remained energised by his search for a new form of pictorial space and painted prolifically.
In his quest for a new visual dimension—where line and colour no longer flattened the picture plane but projected it forward—Caziel’s career began to gather momentum. His first solo exhibition at Galerie Allard in 1947 was followed by an invitation to exhibit at the prestigious Salon de Mai, alongside Picasso, Hans Hartung, Victor Vasarely, Alfred Manessier, and others.
In 1948, the Polish government asked Caziel to present Pablo Picasso with a traditional Polish coat made from the pelt of black Polish heath sheep. Caziel dutifully visited Picasso’s studio on the Rue des Augustins, where he was warmly received. The two men bonded immediately over their shared love of Polish folk art and their experiences as immigrants unable to return to their homelands. To Caziel’s surprise, Picasso was then working on a portrait of his son Claude based on a design Caziel had created for the catalogue of the 1948 UNESCO exhibition.
Between 1948 and 1952, Caziel and Picasso developed a close friendship, spending summers together in Juan-les-Pins, where they drew caricatures of each other. In 1948, Caziel's stylistic preoccupations were divided - strong lyrical and expressive compositions, much indebted to Picasso, alternated with works revealing his quest for Abstraction.
In 1951, Caziel largely abandoned figuration and joined the Groupe Espace, whose mission was to unite Constructivist art with architecture in pursuit of a new visual environment suited to modern society. The renowned art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler invited Caziel to join his stable of figurative artists, led by Picasso, under the assumption that Caziel’s abstract work was merely an experiment. However, Caziel declined the offer, choosing instead to remain committed to abstraction for the rest of his life.
By 1952, Lutka had left for the United States and Caziel fell madly in love with the young Scottish painter Catherine Sinclair, with whom he started a new life in Ponthévrard just outside of Paris. They married in 1957 and a year later their daughter Clementina was born.
During his years in Paris, Caziel was at the heart of the developments of the ‘Ecole de Paris’. His move to Ponthévrard did not mean the end but the beginning of a new chapter in his lifelong drive to follow his path of excellence. His paintings evolved into rigorous geometric patterns, foreshadowing the pure abstraction that would define his work in the 1960s. These abstract works were regularly exhibited in London at the Grabowski Gallery. Caziel and Catherine moved to Britain in 1969, and he became a naturalised British citizen in 1975.
A major retrospective of his work was hosted by the National Museum in Warsaw in 1998.
Whitford Fine Art has represented the Caziel Estate since 1994, and started their commitment to Caziel with a substantial retrospective exhibition in 1995.
Public collections include
Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris
National Museum, Warsaw
Vatican Museum, Rome
Łódź Museum of Modern Art, Łódź
Bibliography
MONKIEWICZ, Dorota. Caziel 1906-1988, Catalogue Raisonné. National Museum, Warsaw, 1998.
PERRY, Jenny. The Grand Play of Light. The Art & Life of Caziel. London, 1997.
Caziel, exhibition catalogue Grabowski Gallery, London, 1968.
Caziel, exhibition catalogue Grabowski Gallery, London, 1966.
MADDOX, Conroy, ‘Caziel’, Arts Review, 14 May 1966.
Solo Exhibitions
2018, Caziel: Paintings 1963- 1967, Lacerated Rhythms, Whitford Fine Art, London
2017, Caziel: Abstraction Explored, Works from the Fifties, Whitford Fine Art, London
2014, Caziel: Espace - Abstraction, Francis Maere Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium
2014, Caziel: Forever Yours, Whitford Fine Art, London
2010, Caziel: Drawings and Watercolours 1935 - 1952, The Paris Years, Whitford Fine Art, London
2008, Caziel: ‘Je suis abstrait’ - Works from the Fifties, Whitford Fine Art, London
2006, Centenary Retrospective Exhibition, Whitford Fine Art, London
2004, Caziel: Abstraction 1963 - 1967, Whitford Fine Art, London. Retrospective Exhibition, Embassy of the Republic of Poland, London
2001, Contour and Line: Selection of Works on Paper from 1965 by Caziel, Whitford Fine Art, London
1998, Retrospective Exhibition, National Museum, Warsaw
1997, Caziel: Drawings from the Forties, Whitford Fine Art, London; Caziel: Works from the Fifties, Whitford Fine Art, London
1995, Caziel: Substance and Light, Whitford Fine Art, London
1992, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol
1991, Butlin Gallery, Dillington House College, Ilminster, Somerset
1990, Memorial Exhibition at the Polish Cultural Institute, London
1978, National Museum, Warsaw
1968, Grabowski Gallery, London
1966, Grabowski Gallery, London
1947, Galerie Allard, Paris
1932, Loza Wolnomalarska (Lodge of Free Painters) - Loża Wolnomalarska
Group Exhibitions
2017, A Century of Polish Artists in Britain, Ben Uri Gallery, London.
1983, Summer Exhibition at Fair Maids House Gallery, Perth
1966-68, Royal Academy of Arts, London
1948-56, Salon de Mai in Paris
1932, Loza Wolnomalarska (Lodge of Free Painters)