Composition near a workshop

Composition Near a Workshop was painted in 1947, two years after Włodarski survived imprisonment at Stutthof concentration camp following the Warsaw Uprising. Angular figures and architectural forms in pink, gray, and ochre interlock against a brick-red ground, with smaller bursts of green, yellow, orange, and black. The forms suggest a figure with a face, a building with windows, machinery, and a pale cross-shape at the upper right. The paint is applied flatly in solid color, with white outlines separating the shapes. The Léger influence from his Paris years is visible in the assembled, mechanical quality of the composition. This is one of his earliest postwar paintings — made while he was rebuilding a life and a practice in Warsaw.