Untitled (Yellow Houses in Nowy Sacz), 1958

C.R. Hiscocks, Winnipeg Gift to the Winnipeg Art Gallery, December 1960

Jan Cybis was one of the leading figures of the Colorist movement in Polish painting. This later work presents a street scene with a succession of colourful buildings of different sizes beneath a cloudy sky and a church tower rising in the distance. The artist’s colour range of predominantly matte tones is on full display—blending green, blue, beige, purple and vermillion—with a cool gray repeated throughout the work, a shade Cybis favoured especially.