Tycjan Knut (b. 1985, Warsaw) works within abstraction at the point where geometry begins to destabilize. Trained in painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and later completing a Ph.D. at the Jan Kochanowski University Institute of Fine Arts in Kielce, he builds a practice grounded in reduction yet resistant to rigidity. His paintings are structured through restraint, but they refuse the certainty traditionally associated with geometric form.
Color in Knut’s work does not operate as surface decoration or expressive gesture. It accumulates gradually through layered applications that produce depth without literal illusion. Subtle tonal shifts and near-imperceptible variations create fields that appear stable from a distance but reveal internal movement upon sustained viewing. The image is not constructed through assertion, but through calibration.
Although his compositions often reference the legacy of postwar geometric abstraction, Knut approaches that lineage critically. The rectangle is not treated as a fixed authority; it is something that can be tested, altered, or made perceptually unstable. Geometry remains intact, yet certainty dissolves. Depth becomes optical rather than physical. The surface holds in a state of hesitation.
Knut’s practice is also informed by sustained research into overlooked abstract painters of the 1960s and 1970s. Rather than revivalism, this engagement functions as structural inquiry — an examination of how abstraction once claimed authority, and how that authority might now be renegotiated. He lives and works in London.
Tycjan Knut (b. 1985, Warsaw) is a Polish painter known for his subtle geometric abstraction and chromatic field paintings. Educated at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, Knut works primarily in painting and drawing, building layered compositions through restrained color, tonal variation, and optical depth. His practice engages the legacy of postwar geometric abstraction while questioning its structural certainty, creating works where geometry remains present but perception destabilizes space. Knut lives and works in London.
