reception to the 1958 installation. Early international recognition (1959-1962) The following year, several of Fangor's abstract paintings were included in a group exhibition organized at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, providing the artist with a chance to showcase his recent work outside of the Iron Curtain. Around that time, the artist started to turn away from his earlier monochromatic palette in favor of color compositions. He also began focusing on the circle, a geometric form that would become the most recognizable motif in his paintings and constitute the compositional basis for over four hundred works on canvas completed between 1958 and 1978. At Stedelijk, Fangor and Zamecznik created another environment installation titled Color in Space where diverse "geometric forms and bright color zones in red, blue, and black affected the space of the exhibition and the constantly changing vision of the spectator." In 1960, the artists published a Manifesto, in which they reiterated a commitment to moving beyond the picture plane and heightening the viewer's perception of the physical space. Crucial to Fangor's subsequent exposure to the West was his encounter with Beatrice G. Perry, the co-founder of Gres Gallery in Washington, D.C., who represented Yayoi Kusama and Fernando Botero, among other international contemporary artists. She had visited Poland in 1959 with hopes of finding new Eastern European artists to include in the Gres roster and taken a great interest in Fangor's idiosyncratic abstract idiom. Perry, along with her business partner Thomas Baker Slick, became an important patron of Fangor in the United States and helped promote his work among American collectors and curators. Scholar Magdalena Dabrowski sees Perry's enthusiasm for the work of Fangor critical to his subsequent participation in two major survey exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Fifteen Polish Painters in 1961 and The Responsive Eye in 1965, the latter being a birthplace of Op Art movement.Curated by Peter Selz, who had traveled to Poland in 1960 and 1961 to select paintings for the exhibition, Fifteen Polish Painters included works by Wojciech Fangor, Henryk Stażewski, Stefan Gierowski, Aleksander Kobzdej, Tadeusz Kantor, and Jerzy Nowosielski, among others. Focused primarily on non-figurative painting, the 1961 show emphasized the importance of abstraction in the history of Polish modern art. In drawing a direct comparison between abstract art and freedom, an approach embodied by the visually liberated works of Abstract expressionism which the U.S. government had fervently promoted