Stanislaw Frenkiel Fine Art

REVIEWS


Typhus in Russia, early 1940s 20 x 19cms Pencil on Paper

We do in fact have some clues about wartime Russia in Stas’s extraordinarily moving evocations of life there – all the more powerful for their poverty of materials and enforced sketchiness. And in those sketches we also see the foundations of his vision, born, precisely, out of suffering, and deeply empathetic with suffering, but always with an edge – satirical or even sardonic. Stas belongs to that line of artists – he himself I think used to mention Goya – who, standing slightly at a tangent, look at the human race and its behaviour and find it much wanting.

Simon Wilson, RWA Exhibition, February 2003

He continued to develop his vision in the marvellous graphic works he made in Beirut in the immediate post-war period. These are among the best things he ever did – his drawing style had matured and he had access to finer materials – the results are pen, ink and wash drawings, some beautifully heightened with monochrome colour wash, that are miracles of observation.
Simon Wilson, RWA Exhibition, February 2003

Beggar, 1947 23 x 17cms Pen and Wash

The Window, 1982 93 x 60cms Oil on Canvas

Frenkiel has a personal voice and a personal vision and, ….that vision encompassed an extraordinarily broad sweep of life and an equal sweep of the genres of painting, from genre itself – everyday life in all its facets - via history and allegory, to the tradition of the nude. - for Stas the human was always central.
Simon Wilson, RWA Exhibition, February 2003
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