“River of Dreams,” watercolor on paper, 11.5″ x 17.5″, 1959, by Felix Krasyk

OPENING: “Felix Krasyk: The New York Paintings,” opening reception 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 24, Gallery Discussion 6 p.m., at Frankenberger Art Gallery, on 2nd floor, Geary Student Union, University of Charleston. Runs through Nov. 22. Call 357-4795.

By Mark Tobin Moore
Frankenberger Gallery director

“I loved design. I wanted to create my own impressions, like Picasso, and not like Rembrandt or Rubens, who were about naturalism. I wanted to paint abstract impressions of the aura and spirit of a person to show what your eyes don’t see.” — Felix Krasyk

In 1952, Felix Krasyk left Charleston, West Virginia, to work and learn textile design in New York City. A year prior to leaving, he won two prizes in the 16th Annual Exhibition of Allied Artists of West Virginia. He’d never before exhibited his work. “My acceptance came only 14 hours before the show, and when ‘Passers By’ By won first place in the oil paint division, I was more surprised than anyone else,” he says.

In New York, he worked at B. Altman’s by day and painted at night. He used almost any materials he could find, bought inexpensively, or borrowed from a friend. He usually painted with oils or watercolor on canvas, paper, cardboard, or show card, a poster-like-surface used by commercial sign painters at the time. A large Picasso exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art affected his own paintings for years. There were no art classes available for Krasyk at Charleston Catholic High School; nor were there any art museums in Charleston when he was growing up, so this Picasso exhibition served as a revelation. It freed him to paint without questioning himself. Krasyk attended the Art Student’s League briefly upon arriving in New York but felt dissatisfied. “There were just too many rules,” he recalls. “I really just loved Picasso’s freedom of design. He could take a person and make him look like a balloon, and it was okay.”

He cites other influences including European painters like Paul Cezanne, Piet Mondrian, Salvador Dali, and American artist Stuart Davis. Cubism and Surrealism had a direct effect on Krasyk’s abstractions as well; but there is also a concern for story-telling narratives, including both documentary and fantasy imagery. And he had other motivations. “I painted to keep myself from going nuts. Whenever I went home at night I closed and locked the steel apartment door and it felt like I was in prison. After all, I am a ‘country boy’ and I missed West Virginia.”

In late 1959, Krasyk returned to Charleston to care for his ailing parents. He landed a professional design position at Woodrum’s Department Store and some years later became a co-founder of Interior Design, Inc. in Kanawha City. Krasyk never painted again and he has never exhibited these works in public, except for ‘Passers By’ and ‘Cockfight.’ It may be said that the works in this exhibition serve as a kind of time capsule of Felix Krasyk’s New York experience, as well as a visual diary, perhaps, of a young man’s search for himself and his artistic vision for one brief decade.

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