Art News

First major UK exhibition of Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal at the Whitechapel Gallery

LONDON.- The Whitechapel Gallery presents the first major UK exhibition of Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal, a leading figure in contemporary painting. Wilhelm Sasnal paints images from everyday life and the mass media. His paintings range from portraits of his family and friends to icons of popular culture such as Roy Orbison, from a news image of a young girl rescued from the wreckage of the recent Tsunami in Japan to troubling chapters in the history of Poland including World War II and the Holocaust. Stylistically, Sasnal’s work fuses Romanticism with Realism, and Pop with Abstraction, demonstrating his knowledge of and passion for the history of painting and painting as a medium. He takes images from the multitude available in comic books, newspapers, television and online that might otherwise be overlooked to create a unique and highly personalised record of contemporary life. The Whitechapel Gallery exhibi