Man, no matter how heroic or self-gloried, here seems an ant, unremarkable and all too soon prepared for a return to dust again. On the other hand, when I hold but a small leaf in my hand, I become humble. Tower of Babel would seem to follow a similar theme. Here, the borders of the canvas crop what seems an even more immense domed tower, honeycombed in tiers of eremite cells or coraline rows of windows. The tower evokes a sense of great, but unreal industry, mindlessly applied and futilely repeated.
Studio presents a space far more confined, an architecture as much mental as visual.
The working style in paintings such as these displays an opulence of palette worthy of Gustave Moreau. He received his diploma from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the mid 1950s. Lebenstein died in 1999 after years of ill health. In the 1960s, the substance of his work shifted from mystical idols to subdued, monochromatic paintings, but a synthesis of mythology and modernity pervades much of his art. His mature technique often reinforces and highlights flat surface contours with a thickly applied impasto to produce paintings approaching bas-relief.