Jozef Halas Biography
Józef Hałas was born on 7 January 1927 in Nowy Sącz. In 1956, Hałas, together with Małgorzata Grabowska, Krzesława Maliszewska and Alfonso Mazurkiewicz, founded Group X, bringing together artists from the local art community. In the early 1960s, the first works of the Figures series were created, showing simplified human figures, composed of geometric figures. At the same time, Hałas worked on two more cycles: Interiors and Roads. The first is the result of the fascination with folk architecture and chiaroscuro effects, while the second is an attempt to bring the title Roads to a simplified form of the isosceles triangle. Both cycles became the starting point for the creation of a key series in Hałas's works, which were mountains. The mountain landscape painted by the artist differed significantly from his traditional performance: the Hałas Mountains have a flattened square-like shape, the monochrome space of which is filled with simple or diagonal lines. At the end of the 1960s, the first works of the Opposing series were created. The synthetic compositions also derive from the landscape, but present it in an even more conventional way. It was an attempt to describe the contrasts that occur in nature. Visible in these works, the inspiration of the seascape is further developed in the 1970s in the next cycle, the Divisions. In 1977, Hałas began working on Pocket gouache. The striking color combinations he achieved were the effect of putting several layers of paint on himself. These experiments with color led to the revival of the interior cycle. The 1980s were dominated by the Góra P series, an extension of all previous landscape studies. As a result, Hałas developed a universal shape of the mountain, which in the lower corners was divided by two diagonal lines. Work on the NS cycle took place in the 1990s. Its name means both the new structure and the name of the artist's hometown (Nowy Sącz). The works in this series are a collection of previous artistic research, presented in a simplified way. He died on January 1, 2015 in Wroclaw.
