The Principle of Chance

Józef Jarema was a visionary, multinational figure—an artist, painter, playwright, actor, and cultural networker whose life and work transcended borders. Born in 1900 in Stary Sambor (then part of Austrian Galicia, now Ukraine) and passing away in 1974 in Munich, Jarema left behind a body of work that resonates with personal intensity and international scope.

Focusing on his postwar years in Rome, the exhibition The Principle of Chance explores Jarema’s intuitive, gestural approach to painting—a response to both the horrors of war and the desire to reconstruct meaning through artistic freedom. Deeply influenced by his friendship with Jean Arp and the Dadaist notion of “intentional coincidence,” his work embodies a poetic balance between control and chaos, between organic form and abstract composition.

Jarema was not only a prolific artist but also a cultural prime mover. As co-founder of the influential Art Club in Rome, he played a central role in building a transnational network of avant-garde artists after the Second World War. His canvases—often intimate in scale yet expansive in vision—reflect a lifelong commitment to artistic freedom, experimentation, and collaboration.

The Principle of Chance invites viewers to rediscover an artist whose legacy resonates powerfully with today’s renewed interest in borderless artistic exchange and abstract expression.