Roman Opałka was born on August 27, 1931, to Polish émigrés in Hocquincourt, northern France. He and his family returned to Poland in 1935, only to be deported to Germany after the Nazi invasion. After being liberated by the United States Army in 1945, they moved back to Poland, where the artist studied lithography at a graphics school before enrolling in the School of Art and Design in Łódź. Opałka later earned a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and began experimenting with abstract and monochrome paintings, which he called Chronomes. In 1965 he began his 1965/1 – ∞ project, to which he would devote the majority of his life’s work. Opałka began exhibiting in Poland in the mid-1960s, and by the early 1970s was represented in solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe and in Asia and Latin America. His first trip to the United States came in 1972, and his first American exhibition opened in 1974 at the John Weber Gallery. In the forty years since then, Opałka's work has been showcased in scores of gallery and museum shows worldwide. His retrospective exhibitions and writings in several languages, as well as his participation in events such as Documenta 6 (1977), the XIX Biennial of Sao Paolo (1987), and the Venice Biennale (1995, 2003), have brought him global recognition. In 1977, Opałka moved to France, settling at Teillé, near Le Mans. He obtained French citizenship in 1985, and in 2009 he was awarded Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He died in Chieti, Italy, in August 2011. Dominique Lévy began representing the Estate of Roman Opalka in 2012, since 2017 has continued to represent the Estate as Lévy Gorvy. Work by the artist is held in major museum collections, including the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.