Henryk Berlewi

Born	October 20, 1894(1894-10-20) Warsaw, Poland
Died	August 2, 1967(1967-08-02) (aged 72) Paris, France

Born 1894 in Warsaw to an assimilated Polish Jewish family. Supported by his mother, he studies fine arts in Warsaw (1904–1909), and later at the fine arts academies in Antwerp (1909–1910), and Paris (1911–1912), returning to Warsaw in 1913 to study at the school of design. During World War I, he discovers futurism and Dada and in 1918 meets the futurist Aleksander Wat and the formist Anatol Stern, Jews whose Polish-language verse he later illustrated.

1920 attends El Lissitzky's lecture in Warsaw, for Berlewi a decisive encounter to move to Berlin, where in 1922–1923 he abandons figurative art for pure constructivist abstraction. 1922 participates at the Novembergruppe exhibition. Along with Adler he is chosen to represent Jewish artists from Eastern Europe at the Congress of International Progressive Artists. Meets El Lissitzky, Viking Eggeling (to whom Berlewi devoted article published in 'Albatross' in 1922), and many others (Moholy-Nagy, van Doesburg, Richter, van der Rohe). May-Sep 1923 presents his first Mechano-Faktura compositions in the Novembergruppe section of the Grosse Berliner Kunstaustellung.

November 1923 returns to Warsaw. With Strzeminski founds a constructivist group Blok. In his review of the exhibition which accompanied the Congress in Düsseldorf, published in Nasz Kurier, he states that expressionism is obsolete and was replaced by Novembergruppe's dada and by constructivism. March 1924 publishes his theoretical tract being written since 1922, Mechano-Faktura (using mechanical means to create texture), prefaced by the writer Alexander Wat; its basic premise rejects the illusion of space in favor of two-dimensionality; color is reduced to black, white, and red, and visual equivalents of images are accomplished by mechanical means using rhythmic arrangements of lines and simple geometrical forms such as circles and squares. Along with the publication he organises the first mechanofaktura exhibition at the Austro-Daimler Automobile Salon. Summer 1924, invited by Herwarth Walden, founder of the Der Sturm magazine and gallery, to exhibit his mechanofaktura works in Berlin; the German version of his manifesto gets published. 1924 establishes Reklama-Mechano advertising agency with Wat and Stanisław Brucz, that—among its rare realizations—worked on the Plutos chocolate brochure.

1926 he quits his research and returns to figurative art and works as a set designer. 1927 settles in Paris, as did other Polish and Jewish artists. 1928-1938 travels through Belgium and does a few portraits of the political and literary world. At that time, learns that he is seriously ill, and stops the artistic activity whatsoever.

1942 leaves Paris, finds refuge in Nice and enters the French Resistance (1943-1944). 1947 returns to painting. Wanting to "reintroduce the object", he makes still lives inspired by the French masters of the 17th century.

Rediscovered by a French critic, Berlewi takes part in a major Paris show, Precursors of Abstract Art in Poland (1957). Suddenly appreciated again, he also has one-man shows in Berlin (1963, 1964), Paris (1965), Warsaw (1966), Zurich (1974), and New York (1976, 1978). Dies 1967 in Paris.

Works

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  Koło i kwadrat w przestrzeni. Mechano-faktura

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  Mechano-faktura construction, 1922

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  Mechano-faktura, 1923/27

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  Neo-Faktur 23, 1923, gouache on paper, 55x44 cm

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  Composition in Red, Black And White, 1924, gouache on paper, 98x81 cm

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  Kontrasty Mekanofakturowe, 1924

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  Mechano-faktura, 1924

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  Reklama Mechano, 1924, cover

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  Reklama Mechano, 1924, sample page

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  Reklama Mechano, 1924, sample page

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  Exhibition of the Mechano-faktura works at the Austro-Daimler Automobile Salon, 1925

• Berlewi Henryk 1925 from the Austro-Daimler exhibition.jpg

  shot from the Austro-Daimler exhibition, 1925

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  Composition, 1931, gouache on paper, 61x48 cm

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  Composition, 1960s, 35x25,7cm

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  Models, 1962, baryt print, 36x27,8cm. Photo by Edward Hartwig

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  Models, 1962, baryt print, 36x27,8cm. Photo by Edward Hartwig

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  Models, 1962, baryt print, 36x27,8cm. Photo by Edward Hartwig

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  Mechano-faktura, ca 1965

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  Mechano-faktura

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  Exhibition poster, 1966, 68x48 cm

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  Self-portrait, 38.3x31.5 cm

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  Mechanic Construction, oil on canvas, 46x61 cm

Writings

• "Mechano-faktura", Warsaw: Jazz, 1924, 15 pp; repr. in Paris: Archives de l'art abstrait et de l'avant-garde internationale, 1962, limited facsimile edition. (in Polish). Written between 1922-24. Information about the manuscript draft, Commentary (Marek Bartelik, 2005).
  • "Mechano-Faktur", Der Sturm 15:3 (September 1924), Berlin, pp 155-159. (in German) [1]
  • trans. K.J. Michaelsen, in Henryk Berlewi, New York: Helen Serger, La Boetie, in conjunction with Herve Alexandre, 1978, pp 11-14.
  • "Mechano-Facture", in Between Worlds, eds. Timothy O. Benson and Éva Forgács, MIT Press, 2002, pp 489-491.
• "Nieco o dawnej awangardzie", Życie Literackie 27 (7 July 1957), pp 5–7. (in Polish)
• Henryk Berlewi malarstwo, Zielena Gora: Salon Wystawowy, 1967. (in Polish)

Catalogues

• Henryk Berlewi, New York: Helen Serger, La Boetie, in conjunction with Herve Alexandre, 1978, 23 pp.

Literature

Books

• Hubert Colleye, Henryk Berlewi, Poolsch schilder, Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1937, 55 pp. (in Dutch)
• Magdalena Frankowska, Artur Frankowski, Berlewi, 2010, 160 pp. (in Polish) [2] [3]

Articles

• Eckhard Neumann, "Henryk Berlewi", Typographica 9 (June 1964), ed. Herbert Spencer, London: Lund Humphries. [4]
• Piotr Rudziński, "Awangardowa Twórczość Henryka Berlewiego", Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 2 (1977), pp 205–219. (in Polish)
• Piotr Rudziński, "Awangardowa Twórczość Henryka Berlewiego Cz. II", Biuletyn Historii Sztuki 4 (1977), 376–387. (in Polish)
• Agata Pietrasik, "Re-Staging the Avant-garde: Henryk Berlewi’s Return to Abstract Art", Widok 3 (2013).

Miscellaneous

• FA Berlewi, a stencil type-face by Artur Frankowski based on poster lettering from 1924 by Berlewi, 2006. [5] [6]

See also

• Poland#Constructivists

Links

• Henryk Berlewi Archive, Frankfurt am Main
• Irena Kossowska, "Henryk Berlewi", Culture.pl, 2002. (in Polish)
• Berlewi at Polish Wikipedia
• Berlewi in The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
• Marcin Giżycki: Henryk Berlewi - Kinefaktura, 3'15", 2012.