Wilhelm Sasnal: Painting as Prop

The Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal has received international acclaim for his crisp, striking paintings inspired by an array of sources, from mass media and historical atrocities to art history and the natural world. Sasnal also works with film, and his screen adaptation of Robert Walser’s novel The Assistant (1907) will be released later this year. For the film set, Sasnal produced canvases inspired by famous 20th-century works: a near-copy of Matisse’s Dance (1910) with a succession of white vertical bars spray-painted on to the edge of the canvas, for example, and a Braque-style cubist still life. These works, along with other paintings by Sasnal that are based on pre-existing or archival images, are going on display at the Stedelijk, in a show that explores the intersection between screen and canvas (30 March–1 September). Find out more from the Stedelijk’s website.

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