To further the Legacy of Master Artist, Leszek Forczek
Forcek’s art career spanned nearly fifty years. Forczek was also a writer, poet, distinguished teacher, lecturer, movie producer & film director.
Master “Aquarelle” Artist” Founder of the “Illuminism Aquarelle” School of Painting and the Illuminism Workshop Series (IWS) and syllabus.
Many believe that Forczek's style & technique of painting, ILLUMINISM, is the 'missing chapter' in art books on American Watercolor. In the mid-80's, while exhibiting in Joshua Tree, California, several of Forczek's works were purchased by the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC).
While showing in Santa Fe, Georgia O'Keefe once remarked to her friend and art critic David Bell: "Forczek began where I left off!" Bell's cover article on Forczek in Southwest Art magazine is a testimony of Forczek's unique style in American painting at that time: 1982.
LANDSCAPES
Forczek's landscapes ranged from the deserts of the California Baha as Sand & Stone -- north to Alaska's Ice & Light, the Auroras, Lakes & Glaciers. A prophetic theme was of the Nar Whales - Northwest Mystique as they rise from the sinking seas toward the Northern Lights.
SOUTHWEST
Forczek painted a series of South-West themes for the Triumverite Gallery in Santa Fe with his Spirit Pots, Spirit of America, Chards of a Nation's Soul, the Eaglets. His California Mission series depicted the swallows returning each year.
ANIMALS
Wildlife - includes the Salmon, birds, the Monarch butterfly triptych and more
FLORAL
The one petaled flower, the Calla; the Rose; Iris; Sunflower in the last days of summer...
FIGURAL / LITURGICAL
* Blue Pieta (Painted for the Papal visit to America by Pope John Paul II)
* Series commissioned by the Bishop of Santa Rosa: Washing of the Feet
* The Miracle of Deseret (The Call, The Arrival, The Departure)
* Stone to Soul book cover for "You Are the Answer" (Michael Tamura)
* Paul on the Road to Damascus
* Archangels Michael & Raphael
* The Healing Mission of Art (Michael)
* Tobias & the Fish
* Mary Magdalene -- Writing in Dust (Cast the First Stone)
. . . and many more
Forczek's unfinished works continue to be discovered
Drafts of several books were recently discovered. One is entitled "Full Circle"; another "The Eye of the Dove". Watch this space!
Ahead of its time, Topaz Mountain this 87 Minute extraordinary DVD is an archetype -- exploring the vulnerability of our precious landscape
Watch FORCZEK speak on the origins of TOPAZ MOUNTAIN in this 19 minute "Intro" speech at the 2014 screening in Lake County, CA
Leszek shares his ideas on color with advanced IWS student, Erika Clark
West Coast “Illuminism" artist Leszek Waladyslaw Forczek unexpectedly crossed the "rainbow threshold" May 20, 2019 at the age of 72. The son of Holocaust survivor, Genovefa (Jean) Rejer; his father was Walter Forczek. His mother Jean was revived when an American parachuter soldier placed a tablet in her mouth as she lay on the ground. Leszek was born in Wendorf, Germany and raised in Brooks, Alberta Canada.
He held a Master of Fine Arts degree from Lethbridge College (Alberta, Canada) and taught at BYU in Utah. His art career began in 1972, serving as a color consultant for National Film Board of Canada (founded by the late John Grierson in 1939).
Illuminism painting is closely related to the mysteries of Light and Darkness which are the underlying realities of Nature, the Cosmos and the individual soul. Color is at the heart of Forczek's engaging, elegant and thoughtful sensibility. His work is based on Goethe's color theory as developed by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthropsophy; and Liane Collot d'Herbois, an English-born, Dutch resident artist and color therapist whose artwork dealt precisely with luminosity and movement. Forczek met Collot's work while traveling through the town of Colmar, France when he stumbled upon her solo exhibition of paintings. This was a turning point in his young life. Collot’s breakthrough work on Light, Color & Darkness and her close collaboration with Dr. Ita Wegman, encouraged Forczek to a life-long pursuit in the development of Illuminism as an artistic and spiritual path.
On Rudolf Steiner’s influence, Forczek wrote: “Dr. Steiner was active during the time of great influx of Eastern spiritual influences in the West. He actively responded to the request of artists such as Kandinsky and Mondrian who were searching for a spiritual meaning in painting, during a time of chaos and crisis... Steiner provided artists with a new basis to approach art, color and painting; making countless references of the correlation between light, color and darkness with thinking, feeling and willing. This understanding of color as integral to the evolution of the human being – both cosmic and physical – was able to endow Art with a healing and spiritual property.”
The School of Illuminism was created in the spirit of independent thinking. His paintings are characterized by their unique sense of luminosity, space and movement, harmonizing the inner and outer aspects of Light, Color and Darkness: “As above, so below.” This balance of inner and outer is in its essence, beauty, art and life. Forczek developed the multi-year “Illuminism Workshop Series” (IWS), teaching several hundred students throughout the U.S. for over 18 years.
His last major project, Topaz Mountain, was a movie four years in the making: a unique chromatic animation of landscapes paintings with a moving testimony accompanied by compelling poetry and music. It is a transformational statement, both mysterious and luminous, on the beauty and vulnerability of mountains, lakes and glaciers.
Forczek’s work can be found in public and private collections; and numerous institutions throughout North America.
