Wilhelm Sasnal retrospective – picture preview

A major retrospective opens this Friday of worky by Wilhalm Sasnal, Poland’s answer to Julian Opie and a leading figure in contemporary painting.

Despite being only 38-years-old , the Whitechapel has decided to chart his progress as a painter of everyday items, portraits of his friends and family and a maker of 16mm movies.

Sasnal’s enmeshing of Pop art with abstraction and romanticism means his paintings have been collected across the world by galleries from the Pompidou in Paris to the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern and the Saatchi in London.

The Whitechapel exhibition is divided into three sections, opening with work made most recently between 2005 and 2011 about his travels abroad and relationship with mass media. The second segment explores Poland’s role in World War Two and includes a take on Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about the holocaust, Maus. The third section features Sasnals film and photography from the period 2001 to 2005.

Sasnal's show forms part of the I,Culture London - a programme of arts events between July and December being staged to coincide with the Polish Presidency of the European Union 2011.

Click here or on the image for a picture preview

Wilhelm Sensal is at The Whitechapel Gallery from 14 October 2011 to 1 January 2012, www.whitechapelgallery.org