The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 18, 2025

Horizontally oriented acrylic painting composed of columns of fine alternating reddish and greenish lines creating the illusion of yellow triangles extending across the canvas. The triangles appear as if a semi-translucent yellow paper has been folded over itself, the yellow darkening with the folded over layers.

Filtered Yellow

1968

Julian Stanczak

(American, 1928–2017)
America
acrylic on canvas
Unframed: 182.8 x 243.8 cm (71 15/16 x 96 in.)
Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art 1969.15
© Julian Stanczak
Location: 228A Cleveland Artists

Did You Know?

After losing the use of his right arm in a Siberian labor camp during World War II, Julian Stanczak fled to a Polish refugee camp in Uganda where he learned how to paint and write left-handed.

Description

For more than a half century, Julian Stanczak maintained a distinguished career as an abstract painter interested in how vision works. Filtered Yellow features hundreds of alternating reddish and greenish razor-sharp vertical bands that create the illusion of a yellow shape, despite the absence of pure yellow paint. As typical of his work, it emphasizes a high level of technical mastery rivaled by few.
  • 1969
    Purchased from Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, NY.
    1969–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH.
  • Cleveland Museum of Art. Art of the Twentieth Century in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Dept. of Art History & Education, CMA, 1969. Mentioned: p. 4 archive.org
    Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1969." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 57, no. 1 (1970): 26. 26 www.jstor.org
    McClelland, Elizabeth. "Julian Stanczak." Arts Magazine 51, no. 1 (Jan 1976): 9. 9
    Cole, Mark. "Good Vibrations: A New Exhibition Celebrates the Dazzling Op Art Movement Centered in Cleveland." Cleveland Art Members Magazine (Mar/Apr 2011): 7. 7 www.clevelandart.org
  • Cleveland Museum of Art, (04//11/2011 - 02/26/2012); "Op Art"
    Contemporary Art and Textiles Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 13-August 26, 1984).
    The Cleveland Institute of Art: 100 Years. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 22, 1982-January 30, 1983).
    Materials and Techniques of 20th-Century Artists. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (November 17, 1976-January 2, 1977).
    Year in Review: 1969. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 27-February 22, 1970).
  • {{cite web|title=Filtered Yellow|url=false|author=Julian Stanczak|year=1968|access-date=18 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1969.15