Rudnytsky to perform at Polish Arts event

Staff report

Youngstown

The Polish Arts Club of Youngstown’s Scholarship Art, Music and Tea Reception will be Feb. 16 at the Butler Institute of American Art-North Building from 1 to 4 p.m.

This free annual event, now in its 78th year, includes a traditional high tea with homemade cookies and is open to the public.

This year’s program will feature a performance by Roman Rudnytsky, a Valley resident who is one of the most-traveled concert pianists in the world.

A soloist with many orchestras, Rudnytsky is a prize winner in 10 national and international piano competitions, including the prestigious International Leventritt and the International J.S. Bach Competition in Washington. He has conducted many master classes in more than 35 countries.

A professor emeritus of the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University, Rudnytsky served on the piano and music faculty for more than 39 years and received a Distinguished Professor Award there.

His musical performance at the Butler North will include pieces by Polish-born composer Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin as well as those by Francois Poulenc, Claude Debussy and Franz Liszt.

The visual artist presentation at the event will focus on Richard Anuszkiewicz, who is one of the founders and foremost exponents of Op Art, a contemporary art movement that grew in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Several of Anuszkiewicz’s pieces are on display in the Main Atrium at the Butler museum. Louis Zona, curator and director of the Butler, will give a presentation on Anuszkiewicz.

Anuszkiewicz was concerned with the optical changes that occur when different high-intensity colors are applied to the same geometric configurations. “My work is of an experimental nature and has centered on an investigation into the effects of complementary colors of full intensity when juxtaposed and the optical changes that occur as a result, and a study of the dynamic effect of the whole under changing conditions of light,” he said.