Ladislas Kijno

Ladislas Kijno was a French painter, born in Warsaw on June 21, 1921. He moved with his family to France in 1925, settling in the community of Noeux-les-Mines in the Pas-de-Calais. Then, he lived since the eighties in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. Before becoming a painter he studied philosophy with Jean Grenier.

Kijno is a major figure of the movement of informal painting. Over the decades, Kijno had successfully become one of the masters of the crease technique. His works are full of tributes to Nicolas de Staël, Nelson Mandela, Galilée and Gargarine, but also to the fights of the algerian and vietnamese people.

In 1991, the French magazine L'Amateur d'Art was devoted to him, with an interview with Jean-Pierre Thiollet entitled "Ladislas Kijno: 'Je suis un moine de l'Art!'" (I'm an Art Monk!). He worked during the nineties on the Notre-Dame de la Treille portal in Lille. He then participated to the creation in Lille of the Center of Sacred Contemporary Art, which had welcolme the works of great artists such as Georg Baselitz, Lucio Fontana, Robert Combas and Andy Warhol.