GŁÓWNA WYGRANA 1965

Kazimierz Mikulski made this painting, GŁÓWNA WYGRANA, with oil on canvas. When? We don't know, but what a painting! I love how Mikulski has approached this surface like a playground where he can bring together different, very distinct elements. Like an exercise in fitting things together that don't quite seem to belong. A woman, a man with a hat, a horse, all set against geometric forms: rectangles, squares, circles. It’s like the artist is saying, hey, let’s see what happens if I put this here, and that there. The paint is flat and opaque, which gives a sense of crispness, like collage, and yet it's so smooth. I wonder what it was like for Mikulski to move between the parts and try to make them cohere? The horse looks like Magritte, the circles feel like Miro, the woman could be Balthus! It all seems to hover in a dreamlike space, like a stage set or a backdrop for some mysterious drama. It reminds us that painting is a conversation, a dialogue between artists across time.