Ladislas Kijno, a major figure of the informal painting movement, left a profound mark on the artistic landscape of the 20th century with his innovative vision and bold creative approach. Informal painting is characterized by its desire to break away from the influences of Cubism and Surrealism, rejecting their pictorial principles such as form, tonal harmony, balance, proportion, unified composition, and centralized structuring. Instead, the painting becomes deconstructed, with works often created spontaneously, incorporating a degree of improvisation.
Kijno is renowned for his unique mastery of crumpled paper techniques, which he ingeniously integrated into his work. These methods allow the artist to create deeply textured surfaces, playing with light and shadow to offer a nearly sculptural dimension to his canvases. By crumpling the paper before fixing it onto the canvas, Kijno captures a frozen movement—a chaotic yet controlled energy—that lends his compositions an organic vitality. This technique is part of an experimental approach where the materiality of the medium becomes as important as color or form, creating a dialogue between the creative gesture and the surface. The folds and tears in his works seem to reflect a struggle between order and disorder, a subtle metaphor for the contemporary world, where beauty sometimes emerges from chaos.
