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Around 1949, Wróblewski abandoned abstraction. He created figurative paintings on the verso sides of every abstract painting he had not used in this way already. With their pessimistic tone, these paintings are an expression of the search for his own way and the will to ?start from scratch,? even if this was to happen within figuration.
Two paintings from the Executions series – a crucial series of this period, in which the artist attempted to present the traumas of war and its aftermath through an “extended concept of realism” – are double-sided. On the reverse of Executed Man (Execution with a Gestapo Man) is Biological Abstraction, a derivative of the earlier Geometrical Abstraction. Completely different at first glance, these paintings in fact echo each other. The colours on recto and verso sides are similar: dominated by blues, greys and blacks. The break of the figure and the unnatural split of the silhouette in the Execution can be considered an effect of abstraction. Knowing the artist’s earlier works, it is impossible to look at his abstractions with trust: they are clearly on the side of death, as replacing names (identities) with abstract numbers had been a tool of the German wartime enterprise of dehumanising victims. In the case of Biological Abstraction, this interpretation is made even stronger by the title, and to be precise, by the split between its title and what can be seen – nothingness split into segments.
Execution Against a Wall is a later painting from this series, with a more mimetic style and in line with the guidelines of social realism. On its verso side, there is Sky, painted in optimistic colors.
