Piotr Kowalski

The work

New York
1997
108 x 148 cm
Photograph on matte canvas

Photographs such as the one shown here, taken from the air above buildings in an area of New York, invite a formal analysis of the repetition of volumes illuminated by winter sunlight and the shadow lines of streets and avenues. The urban fabric forms a sloping beam from the lower right to the upper left.
It is interesting to compare and contrast this image with the paintings Mondrian made 55 years earlier with the same title and subject, New York.

The artist

(1927, Lvov, Poland, now Ukraine – 2004, Paris)

Kowalski’s main artistic activity was not photography. He had studied mathematics, formal logic and architecture at MIT in Cambridge and graduated as an architect in 1952. In 1955, he opened his own architecture firm in Paris and three years later founded a company specialising in the creation and production of architecture and sculpture based on technological experimentation.