“Uncertainty seems to be closer to the truth than certainty…there has to be amazement, there has to be curiosity and there has to be an openness towards what the future will be bring,” Fangor said in a talk held in 2005 with Stefan Szydłowski, the curator of the "Wojciech Fangor" exhibition at the Stary Browar arts and business centre in Poznan. Fangor stayed true to his inquisitive nature throughout his career and this is one of the reasons he became a pioneer in his line of work.

Art historians like to say that Fangor’s work is the perfect material with which to teach the history of painting, as his pieces are testament to the different eras within which he lived. Fangor’s individual exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York is another example of how his contributions to the world of painting have been acknowledged at the highest international level. He was also one of the most expensive Polish painters. In October 2015, his 1970 painting “M 58” was sold for 923,000 zloty, making it his most highly valued painting.

Born on 15 November 1922 in Warsaw, to a businessman father and pianist and poet mother, Fangor grew up in a well-to-do household and received a good education. He was first taught by governesses and private tutors. He then went on to receive instruction from the painter, Tadeusz Kozłowski, with whom he travelled across Europe to admire works of art. They visited Venice, Florence, Rome and Napoli and organised regular excursions to German and French museums. During the war, Fangor studied under famous painters Felicjan Szczesny Kowarski and Tadeusz Pruszkowski and he received his extramural degree at Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts in 1946.

From very early on, Fangor was inspired by the great works of some of the most famous painters of the 20^th Century, including Matisse, Leger and Picasso. He made his own artistic debut in 1949 at the Club of Young Artists and Scientists, with an exhibition containing Cubist collages and portraits. In the 1950s, influenced by political events, he became fascinated by social realism. His 1950 piece “Figures”, portraying two workers next to an elegantly dressed woman, is one of Fangor’s most famous pieces of work from this time, alongside his “Korean Mother” created in 1951. According to art historians, Fangor broke away from this genre and two years later produced a poster for the film “The Walls of Malapaga,” helping set the foundation for the world-famous Polish poster school. He went on to paint over 90 posters by 1961.

In 1958 he created the art world’s first ever artistic ‘environment’ entitled “The Study of Space,” a multifaceted artistic installation set within a concrete space. The installation was created together with the architect Stanisław Zamecznik and was exhibited at Warsaw’s New Culture Salon. It was a result of earlier co-operation between Fangor and Zamecznik as well as other contemporary artists, including Oskar Hansen, Zbigniew Ichnatowicz and Jerzy Sołtan. “The exhibition contains several paintings of various formats arranged irregularly, causing overlapping spatial zones and creating a mood that is different from the mood of each image considered separately,” is how Fangor described his technique, applied for the first time in the world.