Art in Poland 1949-1999

Anda Rottenberg

Stones That Cry

On their return from the war fronts, prisoner-of-war, labour and extermination camps, Polish artists were welcomed by their capital city of Warsaw that was desolate and burnt down to the ground. Even if Adorno’s famed question "whether poetry was possible after Auschwitz" did ever cross their minds, an imperative to bear witness in the first place was by far stronger. It was acknowledged especially by those artists who had previously been safely drifting towards the left, including Bronisław Wojciech Linke, the author of a highly expressive cycle “Stones That Cry,” Maria Hiszpańska Neuman, Zbigniew Dłubak or Xawery Dunikowski, who decided to share his experiences of such concentration camps as Auschwitz, Mauthausen, or Ravensbrueck. The sketching pads and canvasses of other artists also began to fill with the images of ruins, even when they had previously opted for art less socially engaged or even totally indifferent to other than artistic problems. Cherished in the memory of that generation were the most striking images, such as those featured in “Warsaw,” the 1945 cycle of drawings by Tadeusz Kulisiewicz; the 1946 cycle of graphics “Ruins of Warsaw” by Marek Żuławski, or a cycle of photos by Leonard Sempoliński which documented the range of the city’s destruction.

Those testimonies stemmed, first of all, from a spontaneous need of artists, and later on turned into a programme which was worth the best of talents and efforts. No wonder, then, that new Communist authorities extended their willing protection over those artists who were inclined to focus on that subject matter. Taken in their special care was Xawery Dunikowski, a former prisoner of Auschwitz, who was commissioned a monument to Silesian Insurgents on St. Ann’s mountain. Equally favourable was the reception of the works by Felicjan Szczęsny Kowalski, who set himself a task of painting an epic about the war and the plight of its wandering victims. It was carried into life in a classic manner verging on monumentalism, which was, however, by no means devoid of aesthetic effect.

The Beauty of "Kapizm"

Of all progressive art movements that grew in the two decades preceding World War II, by far the most popular with the artists, the public and the critics was Polish Colourism, also known as "Kapizm." Its name comes from an abbreviation KP standing for the initial letters of Komitet Paryski (Paris Committee), and was adopted by a group of art students from Kraków who headed for Paris in 1924 under the leadership of Zbigniew Pronaszko, an art teacher and great promoter of Post-Impressionism. What appealed to them most in Paris of the 1920s, and what they viewed as most modern and worth imitation, were the works by Cezanne, Monet and Bonnard rather than Duchamps, Picasso or Matisse. In their opinion, the real purpose and ethos of art boiled down to the contemplation of the painting matter, study of nature, creation of form by means of colour and analysis of value relations on a canvass

The philosophy of "Kapizm," which championed lack of correspondence with other reality than that of a painting and personal emotions, turned out to be a real blessing in the times of war: when painting, one could, and even should, forget about it. It helped cherish certain values in their intact form, as those values were more universal than the occasional nature of the war - they were not of this world. But at the same time, though in contrast to their painting ethos, the colourists became socially involved. They established their trade unions, published their own papers. "It is noteworthy," wrote Janusz Bogucki, " that at the end of the 1930s and in the early years after the war, Colourism exerted an especially strong impact on the entire artistic community, and it even permeated through the works of such painters whose character and individual style seemed to be very distant to it." No wonder, then, that the representatives of this artistic trend got hold of so many walks of Polish artistic life in the post war era, e.g., of the "Głos plastyków” (Painters’ Voice) monthly, the management board of the Union of Polish Artists (ZPAP), or academies of fine arts. It needs to be emphasised that owing to the major say they had as members of various artistic boards or commissions of the ZPAP, they were able to shape the programmes and profiles of art exhibitions mounted all over the country. The fact that they had control over both the union and art schools made the mentors of Colourism and their supporters by far the most powerful representation of the artistic community in public life and the main partner with whom political authorities could consult their cultural policies."

The Swan Song of the Avant-garde

The colourful community of the pre-war avant-garde, divided as it was by disputes and highly polarised, was active in such major centres as Lvov, Kraków, Łódź or Warsaw. After 1945 it turned out to be decimated and deprived of any impetus. The war took the toll of such people as Witkacy, Karol Hiller, Leon Chwistek and many other artists and theoreticians involved in the pre-war dispute over the form of modernism. It deprived Henryk Stażewski of his home and destroyed his entire artistic output. It drove a wedge between Katarzyna Kobro and Władysław Strzemiński, a well known couple of artists. Lvov found itself behind the Polish border, part of the territory of the Soviet Union. Warsaw was turned into a sea of rubble. There were no longer any grounds for a social utopia, on which various Constructivistic trends used to rest, to develop any further. Some of its former proponents disappeared in the limitless taiga, others sought refuge in the West, while some others returned to Poland side by side with the Red Army to promote a new ideology. The latter included Aleksander Rafałowski, a prospective lecturer of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and a party activist. Strzemiński began to teach at the Łódź Higher School of Fine Arts and got interested in industrial design. The last work that linked him with his pre-war activity was the 1948 design of the Neo-plastic Hall that he made for a new building of the Museum of Art. The Museum was to accommodate the first so far international collection of modern art which was compiled by him and his colleagues from the a.r. group (including Katarzyna Kobro, Henryk Stażewski and Jan Brzękowski) in the 1930s. Viewed as entartete kunst by the Nazis, it was seriously decimated during the war, but even as curbed as that it stood apart (and continues to do so) from any other collection on display in any other museum in Poland. However, soon after the Museum was opened, the collection was stashed away, and Stanisław Strzemiński lost his position of an art professor. From 1950 he made his living by designing shop windows to the merriment of groups of gaping passers-by who watched him hop on one leg and arrange the props with his only hand. He died forsaken by all in 1952, only a few months after Katarzyna Kobro, the most outstanding sculptor of ante-bellum Poland, who lived an equally lonely life and died physically drained out. She was so poor that she had to stoke her stove with her own sculptures. After the war she did not return to her bold and highly spatial compositions. She confined herself to a few small figurative models made of plaster, which were very close to cubist-futuristic style.

Against highly vibrant Poland that was finding it difficult to settle down within its new territorial and systemic borders, Kraków remained a relatively quiet place. Members of the pre-war Kraków Group (I), now partially dispersed, focused on individual artistic quest, very distant from any radicalism, now that they were no longer so socially involved as they once used to be. During World War II a new generation of artists matured. They were the graduates of the famed Kunstgewerbeschule, a follow-up of the pre-war Academy of Fine Arts. It was attended by many artists who later became the core of the Kraków Modernists. But first they formed the Group of Young Painters (Grupa Młodych Plastyków), headed by Tadeusz Kantor. As early as June 1945 they mounted their first exhibition, to be followed by the second one in the autumn of 1946. Both of them signalled the anti-Colouristic approach of those young artists who showed preference for the trends oscillating towards Abstractionism or Surrealism. They found affinity with Picasso, Braque or Leger, and to them abstraction ensured an autonomous status of an object in a painting. Their predilection was largely affected by an exhibition of Modern French Drawing that had opened in the spring of the same year. But by far more important was their negative attitude to their tutors, who championed the ideas of Colourism.

Equally ill-disposed towards the Colourists were the Warsaw artists centred on the Club of Young Artists and Scientists (“Klub Młodych Artystów i Naukowców”). The Club was also a breeding place of numerous talents – including musicians and young writers - who began to flourish as late as the end of the 1950s. In the early years after the war such club members as Marian Bogusz or Zbigniew Dłubak made several efforts to consolidate the former avant-garde. They invited to collaboration such artists as, i.a., Henryk Stażewski, Władysław Strzemiński and Stefan Wegner from Łódź, Henryk Włodarski, a Lvov “facto-realist,” who survived the war by sheer miracle, but also Jonasz Stern and Maria Jarema, who represented the pre-war Cricot Theatre. A little later the Club was also joined by such members of the Group of Young Painters as Tadeusz Kantor, Adam Marczyński, Tadeusz Brzozowski, Jerzy Kujawski, Jerzy Nowosielski, and others, who later formed the Kraków Group (II), which served as a symbolic link with its pre-war counterpart. There seemed to be a prospect that the pre-war "progressive" network could be revived. Their creative potential was best evidenced by the works displayed at the time of the Exhibition of Young Art which opened in Warsaw in February 1948, and the First Exhibition of Modern Art in Kraków that was mounted the same year.

But the first time this new approach could become fully manifest was at the time of the December exhibition. This time it was not only the style that mattered. The exhibition was to promote a new artistic thinking and show correspondences between art and scientific change, especially in physics, and it was to unveil a new image of the world. Featured there were many three-dimensional "models" which were to transpose the notions of physics into the language of art. The works availing of more traditional techniques were marked by a similar aura. Though the exhibition’s purpose was to unite various artistic communities of Poland, the works created by the artists from Warsaw and Kraków constituted its main core. Missing, however, were the works by such personalities as Strzemiński or Kobro, as reportedly, Strzemiński did not identify with the exhibition’s programme. Although Mieczysław Porębski, later an outstanding critic and theoretician of modern art, essay writer and author was the exhibition’s curator, a leading role was in fact played by Tadeusz Kantor, notorious for his eccentricity and radical ideas. Which did not make his position easy, the more so that he was surrounded by overgrown egos of other participants, nearly all of whom have made their names in the history of Polish art.

New art was to epitomise the opening of a new era, also in terms of the socio-political system, as one of the co-authors and theoreticians of the entire project and an outstanding artist himself, Zbigniew Dłubak, had emphasised. He was in the wrong, however, as soon after the exhibition had opened, on the New Year’s Eve of 1949, the Polish Workers’ Party and the Polish Socialist Party were united. This is how the Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) emerged, which marked the beginning of the Stalinist era in Poland.

„Barbarians" in the Garden of Arts

Negative sentiments towards Colourists, who accounted for the majority of the faculty of the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, were also shared by students. The Communist party activists, representing the so-called "ideological" orientation, capitalised on those sentiments in order to attract enthusiastic young artists to the construction of a "new social order." This is how the Self-Educational Group, affiliated with the Union of Polish Academic Youth, was came about, which wanted to "label things with new words." They embarked on a very courageous task to create socially engaged paintings, at times consciously anti-aesthetic, which were to negate both the Haute culture as represented by "Kapizm" and the aesthetic output of the Polish avant-garde. The group found its animator in the person of Andrzej Wróblewski, who was also its main theoretician. It attracted such outstanding artists, as, i.a., Andrzej Wajda, the famed film director, Witold Damasiewicz, Andrzej Strumiłło, Przemysław Brykalski or Jan Tarasin. They became well known at the time of the 1949 Presentations by Higher Art Schools in Poznań. It was then that they won a name of “Barbarians” for themselves. With a view to joining Socialist Realism in art, they embarked on preparations to an exhibition devoted to the last war, and Andrzej Wróblewski painted his famous "Executions" cycle.

The artistic power, which marked Wróblewski’s paintings dealing with the memories of the war, continues to appeal to today’s spectator by its simplicity and expressiveness. The artist does not recall the memories of the entire humanity and does not try to go beyond his own experience of war and art. Featured in his paintings are individual people. They are perceived outside the context of the war hecatomb, which was experienced by an anonymous crowd: their confrontation with reality is highly personal, verging on the intimate. Most of the paintings of the "Executions" cycle feature only the victims: incomplete human forms devoid of any life, looking as empty clothes that preserve no more than a memory of the bodies which they used to clad. In Wróblewski’s paintings death is featured in blue, the colour of the sky and infinity, the most "immaterial" of all colours. Blue spirits of mothers contact their living children, blue bridegrooms with their sensual brides ready to get married; blue faces of victims are juxtaposed with green uniforms of their assassins. Wróblewski used colour in an abstract and symbolic way – in which he followed the older generation of the avant-garde - and created simple forms, at times almost undeveloped, which were labelled by his contemporaries as primitive, brutal and wild. His paintings were rejected both by the faculty members and by the critics as intolerably anti-aesthetic, and what more – incompatible with any ideology that was embraced in those days. His departure from abstraction, which was so popular until then, placed him outside the mainstream of the avant-garde. On the other hand, his conviction that art should have a social appeal did not materialise in a way sufficiently academic to win him the support among the ranks of Socialist Realists. It was many years later that Wróblewski’s work became a benchmark to several generations of Polish painters and laid down the foundations, posthumously, of a local tradition with distinctly Polish connotations and a highly universal appeal.

The Phrigian Cap, or Imports of Expired Canned Food

The advance of socialist realism, very much like the advance of Stalinism, was gradual in Poland. Attempts were made to avoid repressive measures or any direct coercion. Artistic life was turning more ideological mainly owing to the efforts of those artists who were remotely controlled by the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party (PZPR). The new ideology found its most ardent eulogists in the artists centred on a left wing group known under a name of the Phrigian Cap, and headed by Juliusz and Helena Krajewski. They found allies in the followers of academic trends, now united as the Zachęta Group, who had been rejected both by the avant-garde and by the representatives of "Kapizm."

The emergence of the “Barbarians” at the Festival of Art Schools in Poznań (1949) was used to get rid of uncompromising faculty members of various artistic provenance. So side by side with such outstanding masters of “Kapizm” as Jan Cybis or Artur Nacht-Samborski, who had worked at the Warsaw Academy of Arts, sacked were such modernists as Strzemiński in Łódź, or Kantor in Kraków. A little while later the artists who were at the disposal of Communist party took control of the board of the Polish Artists’ Union and all higher art schools. At that point it was relatively easy to carry into life the doctrine of Socialist Realism. The younger generation of artists eagerly espoused Zhdanov’s ideas and agreed that an artist had a mission to fulfil in the institution of a new social order. Whereas older artists, who went through "the survival school" under the Nazi occupation, were less enthusiastic about the experiment of Socialist Realism. In spite, however, of the degree of commitment on the part of individual artists, the movement began to gain a mass-scale momentum in those days. The First All-Poland Exhibition of Art (in March 1950), which was to testify that a new creative methodology was adopted in Poland, turned into a clear success scored by the PZPR Political Bureau. Featured were the works of nearly 400 artists from all over Poland, including some acclaimed masters, who had been encouraged by generous "down payments" offered to support their creative effort. But the success was by no means complete. For following exhibitions, that were held annually in Warsaw, presented a very mediocre artistic standard.

Outside the mainstream were such uncompromising artists as those faculty members who had been deprived of their jobs, but also Henryk Stażewski, Katarzyna Kobro, members of the Kraków Group and some representatives of Warsaw avant-garde. It soon turned out that also the "Barbarians" in the person of Andrzej Wróblewski found it hard to remain within narrow constraints imposed by the convention of Socialist Realism.

Alina Szapocznikow and the „Poem for Adults"

Apart from Andrzej Wróblewski, the other artist that would not be constrained by the canon of Socialist Realism was Alina Szapocznikow. Critics and scholars were fascinated by her approach to the tasks she posed herself as a sculptor. It was marked by radicalism that undermined the-then applicable canon, by the artist’s personal involvement in the very process of creation, even when she had to portray Stalin or make a "monument to friendship." She was the first, and perhaps the only sculptor of the day, that related her work directly to the functioning of human body. She was interested in social, cultural and also existential problems not only within the context of biological existence, but also individual fate. The ontological dimension of her works may be explained by her biography: she was growing up in the ghettos and extermination camps, on the verge of her adulthood to be afflicted by a serious disease which deprived her of any prospects of maternity. She came to face her suffering and the degradation of her body at an age which is usually that of efflorescence and maturing. From her childhood she continued to affirm life while facing death, even when she was speaking about handicapped beings. She emphasised the physiology of sexes, filling her sculptures with her own self, making them her own impersonations, and proliferated her existence by casting her breasts, lips, legs and abdomen, her feet and palms. She also recorded the youth of her foster son and its – almost eschatological – deformity.

It is hard to tell what turn her work would have taken, had she not dared cross the limits of the doctrine of Socialist Realism with her sculpture "First Love" (1954), which not only transgressed the formal boundaries delineated by top party authorities, but also the area of interest which was strictly codified. Her approach was in synch with Adam Ważyk’s “Poem for Adults,” which was written in 1954 and called for "looking the truth straight in the eye," thus marking a departure of Polish culture from Socialist Realism.

The „Arsenał”

In the summer of 1955 Warsaw had an honour of hosting the World Festival of Youth and Students. It was by far more spectacular token of a “political thaw” than any poems written by Adam Ważyk or sculptures made by Alina Szapocznikow. Although Poland opened its borders to young people from all over the world, it was a highly rationed and controlled opening. A decade after the war, the world at large was allowed to catch a glimpse of a merry face of victorious socialist system. It was necessary to emphasise the effects that the "struggle for peace" had produced and to recall the atrocities of war. The latter task was entrusted to young artists from all over Poland, since envisaged as the main event of the Festival was an exhibition of their works under a motto: "Against the War – Against Fascism." It was mounted in the building of the former arsenal in Warsaw. Invited to show their works were both students and recent graduates of the art schools, who were predominantly tutored by conforming professors, in hope that years of educational effort had not been wasted. It turned out, however, that the young artists who showed their works at the arsenal (“Arsenał” and hence the name of the group) disclosed to the world – and the Polish public opinion – a picture of reality that had little to do with the programmed optimism that reigned during All-Poland Exhibitions of Art. By far greatest appeal had the works of prematurely departed Waldemar Cwenarski, a painter of pain and suffering, whose style was very close to that of Roault. "Expressionist existentialism," is the most adequate label of the style that reigned during the exhibition. It abounded in images of poverty, sadness, hopelessness and even ugliness of sorts. This artistic "Purgatory" led many participants into far reaching regions of existentialism – to mention only Jacek Sienicki or Teresa Pągowska – frequently verging on mysticism, as in the case of Jacek Sempoliński, or made them seek refuge in abstraction – to mention Jan Dziędziora or Barbara Jonsher, and also Stefan Gierowski, to some extent.

In spite of individual direction that their artistic quest took, the "Arsenał” generation marked the beginning of a new, and very significant trend in Polish painting, which further consolidated when some of the participants were granted professorships at Polish academies of fine arts.

A Thaw

Although it was by far the most acclaimed and spectacular event, the “Arsenał” exhibition was by no means accidental. It was not a one-off event, either, nor the most radical one in Polish art of the first half of the 1950s. The cultural and artistic "thaw" had started in the very beginning of 1955 and released the activity of all those communities that remained "frozen" since 1949, the beginning of the Stalinist era. The former Club of Young Artists and Scientists was replaced by new groups, clubs and galleries. The first to emerge was the “Group 55,” which apart from Marian Bogusz and Zbigniew Dłubak, also included Kajetan Sosnowski, an author of monochromatic paintings that reacted to light, and sculptor Barbara Zbrożyna. They did not take part in the “Arsenał” exhibition as it was not a mutiny against Socialist Realism, as they claimed, that was the driving force of their work. What mattered in art, in their view, was thinking rather than seeing. The group soon gained wide popularity and began to show their works at a gallery in the Warsaw district of Old Town, which is since known as the Gallery of Krzywe Koło (named so after the street). In the following decade it promoted the most radical ideas by Poland’s young artists.

It was as early as 1949 that nine uncompromising artists who decided to boycott Socialist Realism emerged out of the Kraków Group of Young Artists. They were Tadeusz Brzozowski, Maria Jarema, Tadeusz Kantor, Jadwiga Maziarska, Kazimierz Mikulski, Jerzy Nowosielski, Erna Rosenstein, Jerzy Starzyński and Jonasz Stern. In the autumn of 1955, as already the Group of Nine, they mounted a joint exhibition featuring predominantly expressive compositions marked by highly metaphoric climate. Members of the group soon became the co-founders of both the Cricot 2 Theatre and a new Kraków Group.

At the end of 1955 students of the Catholic University of Lublin formed a “Zamek” (Castle) Group, where by far the most important role was played by Włodzimierz Borowski, an artist experimenting with “non-artistic” matter and creating anti-aesthetic paintings. Later on he even set to make structures out of such objects of everyday use as plastic bowls, plates, elements of surgical equipment, parts of clothes, etc. In his cycle of artons he used circulating liquids and simultaneously blinking lights. He was also acclaimed for his cycles of unusable objects ("Niciowce" / Threads/, "Zbiory trzepakowe" /A Clothes-Horse Collection/). He also introduced a notion of "Syncretic Shows, which boiled down to an ongoing questioning of his accomplishments, to a game with objects and artistic situations he had created, going as far as actions extreme in their magic layer, such as, e.g., drilling through the eyes of his photographed "alter ego" with an electric drill.

The artists of the "Zamek" group worked in the company of young critics and art theoreticians who published an artistic magazine "Struktury" (Structures), which was a rostrum from which "modernity" in art could be preached. The editing team of the "Struktury" consisted of Urszula Czartoryska, Wiesław Borowski, Jerzy Ludwiński and Anka Ptaszkowska, to turn into one of the most significant group of Polish art critics.

At the turn of 1955 and 1956, new groups of artists began to emerge also in other Polish cities: the R-55 Group in Poznań, or the Group X in Wrocław. While the former invoked “non-Socialist” Realism, the latter wanted to get involved in artistic experiment, without, however, transgressing the limits of traditional means of expression. Warsaw saw the emergence of artistic “salons” that were linked with cultural magazines that were being gradually closed down, such as “Po Prostu” (Point Blank), “Nowa Kultura” (New Culture) or “Współczesność” (Present Day). They operated at exactly the same addresses as the magazines, and attracted many artists previously affiliated with the “Arsenał,” or hosted groups from other Polish cities.

This highly dynamic artistic movement preceded anti-Stalinist political and social developments. Let us recall at this point that the Poznań mutiny flared up as late as June 1956, to pre-empt the real change brought about by the so-called Polish October, which, unlike the Hungarian revolution, did not result in any bloodshed and was successful. That the success was superficial, the Polish public was to find out in the following year.

A New Lesson Taught by Colourists

The "thaw" marked a return of "Kapizm." Its representatives were again nominated as faculty members, decorated with high ranking state distinctions or elected as members of the authorities of the Polish Artists’ Union (ZPAP). They also began to return to international art scene, i.e., to the Venice Biennial Exhibition or Guggenheim Museum in New York. Especially successful was Jan Cybis, a favourite of students and the entire public. But his teachings were not followed in every respect, as young people put them to their own use: they transposed the painting matter as defined by “Kapizm” into a unity of compositional discipline which was championed by Strzemiński (a Unist). What thus began to emerge was the Polish variety of Colourist Abstractionism – the so-called painterly painting – that was then practised by dozens of artists all over Poland. Polish galleries and salons began to fill with abstract paintings created by a multitude of artists which ranged from metaphysical canvasses by Stanisław Fijałkowski from Łódź, who was Strzemiński’s disciple, to semi-landscapes filled with light and joy by Taduesz Dominik, highly dramatic “Axial Figures” by Jan Lebenstein, "brutal" compositions by Aleksander Kobzdej, action paintings by Rajmund Ziemski or concentric circles by Wojciech Fangor. Premature death brought to a sudden halt the work of Zbigniew Tymoszewski, author of fleshy and rhythmical compositions giving rise to biological, Soutine-like associations.

At the time the work by Stefan Gierowski became consolidated and gained its highly individual traits. His paintings - abstract almost from the very beginning, with their firm structures subject to strict compositional discipline – became an area where he examined the very nature of painting. The artist experimented subsequently with such topics as the function of light, directional tensions, glossy and dull finish, texture, gamut of colours, colour loss and vibrations, about any possible interaction between a painted, abstract fiction and the physical reality of a painting. About the limits of normative aesthetics and the current function of painting.

The Cricot 2 Theatre and the Kraków Group

Although the name "Cricot 2" was used first in 1956 to refer to a theatre run by Tadeusz Kantor on the occasion his staging of S.I. Witkiewicz’s “Mątwa” (Cuttlefish) at the Kraków House of the Painter, it actually originated in the days of the Nazi occupation (1942-1944) and referred to the Underground Experimental Theatre, also known as the Independent Theatre, which directly followed in the footsteps of the Cricot theatre that had been established before World War II by Józef Jarema, brother of Maria Jarema, a co-founder and actress of the Cricot 2 Theatre. It proposed new thinking about theatre, which became evident when the "Return of Odysseus" was staged in 1944: it questioned the very notion of the stage and replaced it by the "place of action"; instead of theatre props it used genuine objects which enriched the spectacle with their own social and cultural designates. Acting was confined to either individual or collective form of existence and guided by general instructions offered in the "score" rather than the rigours imposed by the dramatic text. Music was "pre-prepared," and so as other elements of the performance it was its integral part, maintaining, however, its autonomous nature devoid of any illustrative function. A long list of Kantor’s collaborators included numerous artists-members of the Kraków Group, who affected the course and shape of the spectacles staged from the end of the 1950s onwards. A very special role was played by Kazimierz Mikulski, Tadeusz Brzozowski, and Maria Jarema, who designed "formless" costumes for the "Cuttlefish" and the "Circus" (1955-1957) and took part in the performances as an actress. After her death in 1958, a central position in Kantor’s performances was reserved for Maria Stangret. With the evolution of new artistic paradigms, the theatre was assuming new identities (of an "autonomous" or "informel" theatre of "permanent evolution of theatrical forms," "Zero," "popular, " and last but not least, "impossible theatre," or the "theatre of death"- 1975). It was the last phase that brought Kantor his international popularity. From the middle of the 1960s onwards, theatrical forms proposed by the Cricot 2 Theatre were also accompanied by non-theatrical events masterminded or inspired by Kantor himself, which accounted for the vitality and "immortality" of this theatre of death.

In spite of close artistic ties of friendship and their involvement in the productions of the Cricot 2 Theatre, in formal terms it took the members of the Kraków Group some time to emerge. Which officially happened in May 1957. Owing to the membership of such artists as Jonasz Stern, Maria Jarema and Adam Marczyński, the Group was a follow-up of the group that had existed before the war. Apart from the Nine artists hostile to Socialist Realism, the Group also attracted a number of interesting Kraków artists, but also such residents of Warsaw as Jerzy Tchórzewski or Jan Tarasin. Consistent in their negative attitude towards the Colourists, they were looking for some solution that could help them meet the demands of current times. As most of them were painters, they focused on the absurdity of Socialist Realism, showing little respect for sanctified abstraction which they used whenever such a need would arise. The only faithful were Jadwiga Maziarska and Maria Jarema, who was awarded the UNESCO prize at the time of the Venice Biennial Exhibition in 1958, shortly before she passed on. Jerzy Tchórzewski also approached abstraction in a highly individual way, so as did Jerzy Nowosielski – the only author of secular icons world wide – who was sort of flirting with it. In time, abstraction took a complete hold of Tadeusz Brzozowski who, however, never left any of his paintings without a humorous comment referring to their notional layer which was included in their titles.

Erna Rosenstein and Jonasz Stern were traditionally Surrealist. The former showed provenance for poetry and frequently reached for Dadaistic means of expression, which had little to do with painting. As the Holocaust survivor, the latter invoked symbolic eschatological motifs. Involved in Post-Constructivist experiment were Adam Marczyński, who subjected his works to the discipline of geometrical abstraction, and Andrzej Pawłowski, who tried to expand this notion to cover the third dimension with the help of light, photography and film.

Fifteen Percent of Abstraction

At the end of the 1950s more attempts were made to bring into order and to develop a new hierarchy of values in art. In terms of public appeal a major role was played in this regard by the “Przegląd Artystyczny” (the Artistic Review), a magazine that until then had promoted Socialist Realism, but since 1957, in a new graphic and substantive format (with Aleksander Wojciechowski at its helm), acted as an organ of the Polish Section of AICA. The campaign for "modernity" was furthered by collective exhibitions, which made conscious references to the First Exhibition of Modern Art in 1948.

In order to emphasise their ideological links with the Kraków manifestation of new art, the subsequent exhibitions were since marked with consecutive number. Accordingly, in 1957 the Second exhibition was held at the Warsaw Zachęta gallery, and in 1959 – the Third Exhibition of Modern Art was mounted. Both of them contributed to the emergence of a new axiological order. The highest grades were given to abstract paintings, most of which represented the genre of the so-called "informel" or "action painting." It also stimulated the emergence of a great number of new Polish artists, including nearly all founders of the Kraków Group, the Group 55, and the R-55 group, as well as Strzemiński’s former students. So as it happened on previous occasions, Henryk Stażewski’s works were viewed as indisputably most significant. Many years later, the maturity of those young artists was best described by Bożena Kowalska, who wrote: "At the Warsaw exhibition many artists presented their own mature programme in paintings that represented a crystallised, almost finite concept of art, which was to undergo only minor modifications in the future." But the Third Exhibition of Modern Art was closed only three days after the varnishing-day.

The heroic period in Polish art found its culmination point in the “Confrontations 1960” exhibition that was mounted under the auspices of the “Przegląd Artystyczny” on the occasion of the International AICA Congress held under a motto "Art – Nations – World." Communist authorities allowed for this final manifesto to be made, in spite of a regulation issued in the previous year that no more than 15% of abstract works could be displayed at public exhibitions. From that moment on, a Polish Abstractionist could feel like a hero and subversive in one, and abstract paintings were smuggled into exhibitions as a token of patriotic attitude. Many years had to pass for some people to realise that abstraction, or poetic metaphor in other words, were a convenient way to escape from the reality.

The freeze on artistic freedom imposed in 1960 coincided with the debuts of artists younger than the “Arsenał” generation Their entry into artistic circulation was, however, much harder as the times did not favour collective statements, the avant-garde had been dispersed, and the “Przegląd Artystyczny” was handed over to the Group of Realists which consisted of the luminaries of Socialist Realism. Parallel to that, the ethos of omnipresent Abstractionism – which was “in” in social terms - began to wane. New times brought new challenges that had to be met. They were confronted by three young artists: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Władysław Hasior and Roman Opałka.

The "Abakans," Alterations, Swarms

Starting from the beginning of the 1960s Magdalena Abakanowicz turned the traditional weaving technique into a means to build spatial forms of fleshy structure and organic connotations. Those monumental, three-dimensional forms, which were labelled as the "Abankans," epitomised a victory over pre-conceived divisions into genres, and transformed the function of fabric. They epitomised a transformation of a decorative object into an expressive sculpture, and won her the 1965 Grand Prix at the Seventh Biennial Exhibition in San Paolo.

In the 1970s she worked on a cycle of sculptures made out of sack-linen, which she called Alterations. They usually consisted of "hollow" and headless figures of men, women, boys and girls, which were frozen still. They were shocking by their both mutual and human affinity. The figures formed crowds: uncountable groups or rows of beings which expressed the same emotional tension, the same general and universal anxiety or inability, innocence or expectation, or many other notions which they were not supposed to symbolise, but which they impersonated.

In the 1980s Abakanowicz produced a series of large sculptures in stone, timber and metal, as well as open space installations (in the USA, Israel, Germany, Italy, Korea and Japan). She made enormous groups of hierarchic and semi-organic forms, and headless "crowds" cast in bronze. She worked separately on their heads or faces, to be more precise, with tired and crinkled features, which resembled her multiple self-portraits.

In 1991 she designed Arboreal Architecture for the Defence, a living quarter in Paris, which consisted of houses shaped as huge trees covered by real vegetation. By way of a counterpoint, she also worked on a series of monumental timber and metal sculptures, which she labelled the War Games.

In mid 1990s, together with Japanese choreographers, she worked on scripts of spectacles filled with movement, which were an attempt to add the forth dimension to sculpture. They were performed by the Japanese and Polish dancers.

Hasior ante portas

Soon after graduating from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, Władysław Hasior, a resident of Polish Podhale (Highlands), had a chance to go to Paris (1959-1960) where he got to know Ossip Zadkin. Then he travelled in Western Europe visiting Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Austria. Owing to that journey, his contacts with a group called "Phases" and Eduar Jaguer, he mustered courage to transgress the boundaries of individual genres and form. In effect, Hasior began to work on surrealistic facilities which were made of the "objects found" (objets trouvees), most frequently of everyday use, poor and primitive, frequently verging on shoddy, thus exposing their provincial kitschiness. When juxtaposed in an absurd way, they suddenly acquired fresh meanings, began to rank as totems, objects of veneration or magic tools. It was quite early that he began to use such elements as fire and wind as immanent construction materials of his art in order to enhance the magic effect of his facilities. He interfered with the landscape by making huge "musical" sculptures of metal and concrete. The latter were cast directly in soil, whereby he followed the experiments that had been made as early as 1960 ("Sculpture de terre" by Sebastien). In the next phase he focused on "image-like forms," assemblies made of various objects and materials, which frequently turned into "standards": soft fabrics reminding of archaic war or church banners that were used during processions. He himself also arranged such processions by making holiday dressed highlanders and fire-fighters walk in the Podhale pastures and meadows in ranks and carry pagan banners. In 1989 he did not get involved in an almost universal boycott of the Martial Law by artists, but instead focused on the opening of his own museum in Zakopane, where he spent his final years embittered by his loneliness and the fact that he had been forgotten by the public.

Time Counted Off in Solitude

Roman Opałka made his debut at the time when Poland attained economic stability owing to an artificial price freeze and when no licence to contest had yet been granted. In other words, Roman Opałka made his debut far from the art’s maddening crowds and far from the bids of marketable values. He enjoyed the luxury of generous poverty, which facilitated a quiet study of the sense of creation. His interests did not focus on the possibility to transgress the formal canons of a work of art, or the questioning of the conventions of painting. He was seeking a visual equivalent of such notions as "multiplicity" and "plurality," which were tinted by man’s perception of infinity that was most accurately measured by time. In order, however, for time to be grasped, it also needed its own measure. Such measure could be found in the rhythm of a clock’s mechanism. It was a monotonous and objective measure which, however, did not contribute to our knowledge of this world anything else but a number. The movements of the clock’s arms seemed to be infinite on account of their repeatability. Whereas a more common measure could be found in change, which testified to the real passage of time. Opałka wanted to record that change. To find a visual equivalent of the measure of his own life by juxtaposing its finite nature with the infinity. The finitude entails measurability, and accordingly, our ability to count it. We count with the help of numbers. By writing numbers down we get a visual, material evidence of time passage, which is an inherent part of our biological life. In 1965 Opałko began to record his life’s rhythm by putting down digits on his canvas and by saying them out loud. Parallel to that, he also began to record change by taking photos of his own face. His paintings grow increasingly whiter as the number of his grey hairs increases. This change is almost imperceptible, when one looks at subsequent "details" or photos taken one after another. We cannot see any change unless we compare the canvasses set far between in time.

His face also changes as if "on its own," as the numbers written down on an increasingly whiter background grow. But there is some inherent magic to those numbers; their slow-motion progress reflects an uneven rhythm of man’s growth and maturity. In childhood it is easy to arithmetically duplicate one’s own life, which becomes impossible at an older age. White rows of numbers gain some metaphysical properties and proceed towards the infinity at an increasingly slower pace. But the rhythm of signs put down by a human hand is not mechanical. The white colour varies in intensity, depending on the quantity of paint and the pressure of a brush. The painting begins to glitter and thus fulfils our aesthetic needs by heading towards the forgotten category of beauty and Władysław Strzemiński’s “Unity” (Unism). The latter’s paintings were not made out of purely aesthetic motivation. Their shape, rhythm and colour was a product of time-consuming study of the perceptual properties of human eye, the effect that line and colour had on human psyche. But while Strzemiński’s paintings were a product of his study of the theory of visual perception, Opałko’s “Details” are an output of a process in which the artist and his work become united. They are no more than a sensitive record of the biological energy of an artist, the man with a specific face, pronunciation and language intonation.

None of Opałko’s canvasses is a separate painting in itself: the process in which individual “Details” are painted as part of one major work is as continuous as life and as a counting process. The higher the numbers get, the fewer of them may be put on a canvass. The slower is the rate at which their value increases. It took thirty years of the artist’s life to reach the digit 5 000 000. Once he gets to a number consisting of seven times digit seven, i.e., 7777777, the painting will turn completely white. "Between the grand poles of black and white I perform a sfumato of one existence – where the colour becomes mortally emotional,” Opałko wrote recently. This “mortal” emotionality of colour is a token that the finitude has moved towards the infinity.

Conventions of Dreamers and Alliances with the Working People

The repressive measures against abstract art were accompanied by political initiatives launched by top party officials to ensure "greater cultural activity in Western and Northern regions" that Poland acquired in the aftermath of the Yalta Treaty, and which were referred to as the "Recovered Territories." This greater activity boiled down to the funding of all-Poland artistic events staged under a motto of an "alliance between the working people and art" in other than major art centres. Consequently, in 1961 the Galeria EL (EL Gallery) was opened in Elbląg by Gerard Kwiatkowski (Blum) who worked with source materials available at the local metallurgic plant and mounted a Biennial Exhibition of Spatial Forms. In 1963 two more art events were conceived: "The Golden Grape" Festival in Zielona Góra, and the Koszalin Plein-Airs at Osieki. Another initiative that followed a little later was the "Convention of Dreamers" at the Nitrogen Plant in Puławy. The popularity that those festivals, conventions and plein-airs enjoyed must have surpassed all expectations. Avant-garde artists from all over Poland were thus given an opportunity to meet. The events were also frequented by such mentors of the avant-garde of the 1940s as Henryk Stażewski, Marian Bogusz, Erna Rosenstein, Zbigniew Dłubak or Kajetan Sosnowski. Also the representatives of the Kraków Group, the “Zamek” from Lublin, the R-55 Group from Poznań or Group X from Wrocław would show up. Apart from purely artistic activity, such events also turned into discussion forums, where serious conferences were held attended by Poland’s most outstanding art critics, philosophers, mathematicians, literary experts and composers of contemporary music. It was at Osieki that Tadeusz Kantor staged his acclaimed “Marine Happening” at the time of which Edward Krasiński, dressed in his tail coat, conducted the waves. It was there that Jerzy Bereś performed witchery at the “Altars of Art” and it was there that such renowned artists as Magdalena Abakanowicz or Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz showed their most recent works. It was also there that young rebels trying to blow up the existing art paradigms made their debut, and where Conceptualism began to flourish.

The Biennial Exhibition of Spatial Forms facilitated a rapid evolution of form and it was as early as the second half of the 1960s that the first attempts were made there to create minimalist sculptures. Properties of various materials were compared and their identity was exposed. It was also at those plein-airs that Henryk Morel was first discovered.

He quickly turned into a legendary figure, the more so that at that time he had been artistically active for no more than three years, i.e., from the time his works were first displayed at the Second Exhibition of Warsaw painters and sculptors, members of the Reconnaissance Group (1965), through the Second Triennial Exhibition of Drawings (1968). But most significant were the final two years of that period when he turned into a star of the plein-airs in Puławy (1966), Elbląg and Osieki (1967), or the “Golden Grape” festival in Zielona Góra (1968). This was due not only to his fresh and original approach to sculpture’s form, but also an innovative juxtaposition of permanent, hard elements with the soft, perishable and helpless ones. Even more important, perhaps, was his attempt – probably unconscious – to turn sculpture into an object of broader interpretation, to enrich it with meaning by the use of various kinds of material, which approach was typical of the Minimalists whose sculptures were made at that time in the United States, to mention the experiments by Richard Serry.

When professor Juliusz Starzyński, the-then president of the Polish Section of AICA, the Association of Art Critics, embarked on the preparations to its World Congress, he wanted to mount an exposition in Elbląg that would be a crowning point of Polish accomplishments in Minimalist art. The sculptures by Morel, who was already dead at the time, were to be the main exhibits. The Congress was held in 1975, but Elbląg was not included as one of the Congress venues, because Gerard Kwiatkowski, the main animator of the whole project, was considered to be mentally ill. What has remained of the whole idea was Henryk Morel’s legend.

The heroic stage of the plein-airs closed with the “Wrocław 70” Symposium where Henryk Stażewski presented his light sculpture drawn in the sky with anti-aircraft spot-lights. Soon afterwards other, though quite marginal, forms of freedom of art were allowed to emerge, when a network of independent art galleries was established.

Art Venues

In Communist Poland a very important role was played by places which were marked by art in that they tried to maintain the widest possible autonomy in confrontation with the command policy pursued by party authorities. It was with utmost deliberation that they found a place for themselves at the outskirts of official artistic life and tried to protect a chamber-like nature of their activity in order "not to be too gross a provocation to the authorities."

Ranking as first among such art venues was the Warsaw “Krzywe Koło” gallery which was run by Marian Bogusz, and which hosted throngs of experimenters from all over Poland throughout the entire decade of 1956-1965. Ranking as number two was the famous "Krzysztofory" gallery in Kraków, which was opened on an initiative of Taduesz Kantor, and which continues to be a seat of the Kraków Group until the present day. Apart from exhibitions, staged there were also premiers of the Cricot 2 Theatre, including the acclaimed "Dead Class" of 1975.

In 1965 two very important galleries were opened in Warsaw almost simultaneously: “Foksal” (named after the street) by Wiesław Borowski and “Współczesna” (Contemporary) by Janusz Bogucki.

Like in the case of the "Krzysztofory," the idea of the "Foksal" gallery was conceived by Taduesz Kantor, and its activity continued to be under his impact until his death. It was there that the first happenings were staged and mounted were exhibitions which reflected subsequent stages of Kantor’s work. Initially it was run by Włodzimierz Borowski together with Mariusz Tchorek and Anka Ptaszkowska. They were the graduates of the Catholic University in Lublin and members of the local "Zamek" group. Acting as the gallery’s theoretician for some time was Andrzej Turowski, an eminent analyst of Constructivism. It was the only such gallery that not only wanted to mount exhibitions and artistic events, but also to create ideological foundations of its own operation and execution of art. Its publications were also highly meaningful, as evidenced by their titles: "Theory of Place" or "Elimination of Art in Art." They questioned not only the existence of a work of art, but also any of any of its traces. It was the only such Polish gallery at the time which had an international programme and a highly specific profile. It gave preference to intellectual art, which usually had a very narrow circle of spectators. Henryk Stażewski, the mentor of Polish Constructivists, was its regular collaborator, so as Zbigniew Gostomski, Edward Krasiński, Maria Stangret, Koji Kamoji (a Japanese artist settled for good in Warsaw) and Krzysztof Wodiczko. Later on they were joined by Andrzej Szewczyk, Mikołaj Smoczyński, Marek Chlanda and Leon Tarasewicz. As of the beginning of 1990s, the Foksal gallery had Mirosław Bałka for its spiritual patron.

A more open formula was proposed by the “Współczesna” gallery right from the beginning. With no specific programme of its own, it quickly responded to new phenomena in Polish art and featured events of highly diverse artistic provenance, focusing on the so-called actions or environments. The most interesting of them included the "Spatial-Musical Composition" by Teresa Kelm, Zygmunt Krauze (the composer) and Henryk Morel; Józef Szajna’s "Reminiscences," which were also shown at the Venice Biennial Exhibition in 1970; Karol Broniatowski’s "Threat" (the Venice Biennial Exhibition, 1972); or Jerzy Kalina’s "Hyper-realism." Under the directorship of Janusz Bogucki, the gallery continued to operate through 1974.

In Wrocław a very important role was played by “At Mona Lisa’s” gallery which was run until 1967 by Jerzy Ludwiński, who had also collaborated with the “Zamek” group in Lublin and the “Struktury” (Structures) magazine. The gallery invited members of the Group X, mainly those who were most involved in their search of conceptual nature, such as Jan Chwałczyk, Wanda Gołkowska, Jerzy Rosołowicz, Zbigniew Jurkiewicz, Zbigniew Makarewicz, but also Andrzej and Natalia Lachowicz, who opened their own “Permafo" gallery (in collaboration with Zbigniew Dłubak) a little while later.

As of 1970 there was a rapid growth of the number of galleries of a highly ephemeral nature. Some of them turned into the venues where new art was shown, while others disappeared as quickly as they surfaced, and were adequately labelled as "non-existent galleries." The Warsaw "Poetry Bureau" of Andrzej Partum played a very significant role: it promoted exchange of letters, championing "postage art" and visual poetry. Partum was the first Polish citizen who started to publish books outside censorship by invoking a provision whereby a publication consisting of less than one hundred copies was viewed as a manuscript. His poetry books had such weird, Dadaic and glossolalic titles as "Frekwencja opisu” (Frequency of Description) (1961), “Zwałka papki” (Dumping the Pap)(1965), “Osypka woli” (Coarse Flour of Will)(1969) or “Tlenek zasobów” (Source Material Oxide) (1970) which were illustrated with highly inventive gouaches by such acclaimed artists as Alfred Lenica. Ewa Partum, a well known performance artist and feminist, now resident in Berlin, also had her own gallery over a short period of time. Almost at the same time the gallery "Pi" was opened by Maria Anna Potocka, an art critic and theoretician, who founded a private Museum of Artists at Niepołomice near Kraków and continues to run a non-commercial gallery in Kraków until today.

Equally noteworthy was the "Repassage" gallery at the Warsaw University. Initially, it was under a strong impact of Włodzimierz Borowski and operated under a name “Sigma.” Then it was run, respectively, by Elżbieta and Emil Cieślar (now resident in France) and Grzegorz Kowalski, who lectured at the Department of Sculpture of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. The “Repassage” was a place where action art developed. Apart from indoor spectacles, which were staged by such most interesting artists of their generation as Zbigniew Warpechowski, Jerzy Kalina, Teresa Murak, Krzysztof Zarębski or Tomasz Osiński (both now resident in the USA), Zofia Kulik or Przemysław Kwiek, the artists collaborating with the gallery, including the Cieślars themselves, launched street events of intervening nature.

They capitalised on their licence to experiment and resorted mainly to artistic games. Over 1968-1976 the authorities had too much trouble with Polish philosophers, sociologists, writers and workers, or with the entire dissident movement, to bother about in-depth analysis of the "pranks" put up by artists. Moreover, the existence of licensed artistic freedoms, marginal as it was, served to legitimise the repression effected by the state in other areas of public life.

Sisyphean Utopias and Xenological Design

Polish Conceptualism of the second half of the 1960s did not merely boil down to a study of the grammar of art, in which excelled Jarosław Kozłowski. At the early stage of his work he carried highly elaborate linguistic exercises which were inspired by the texts by Wittgenstein and Alfred Tarski, and brought him closer to reticent conclusions drawn by Art&Language or Joseph Kossuth. Parallel to that, absurd or utterly impossibly actions were also designed. E.g., Kantor proposed to "Wrap up Achilles heel, Cleopatra’s nose, William Tell’s apple, the Eye of Providence, Columbus egg, or Damocles sword." Zdzisław Jurkiewicz wanted to measure the infinity and to bring the universe closer. He also designed chairs conforming with convergent perspective, on which one could not possibly sit down. Jerzy Rosołowicz devised an “instrument to catch the dew," and the "Neutrodrom" – a 100 metres high conical form turned upside down, which was supposed to distort the operation of such human senses as smell, taste, hearing or balance. Through the end of the 1960s much more serious study of "social design" was carried by Krzysztof Wodiczko, who also authored interactive machines and instruments which were ideologically rooted in the tradition of the Constructivist social utopia. The first device he had designed, the so-called "Personal Instrument," was to help communicate by means of special signals, which were to be emitted and received electronically. The following one, "a machine for walking," was a short moving rubber side-walk, which was set in motion by means of human muscles in the same way a bicycle is. Further "instruments" were more complex not only technically, but also in terms of their communication content, and were made outside Poland after he had left for Canada. He is also known for his houses on wheels: the "Homeless Car" and the "Police Car," which served both as a means of transport and a shelter. His most recent invention is "Aegis," an early warning device to be used by people feeling threatened in large urban centres. The artist is currently championing a new discipline, which he has labelled as "Xenology," being the knowledge about ill-feelings and hostility towards other people, which is not really an absurd idea in the times after the Holocaust.

Eulogists of Polish Poverty

When the state authorities had revealed their real intentions in March 1968, which came as a shock to the majority of Polish public opinion, artists began to make increasingly bolder forays into social life. The generation of Conceptualists did not merely confine themselves to art for art’s sake: by expanding the limits of art, they wanted to broaden the limits of personal freedoms. In 1968, when Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek were still students, they made a symbolic sculpture named “Człowiek - kutas” (The Prick of a Man), which openly made references to the category of people who then wielded power in Poland. A little later they formed an artistic tandem known by the name of KwieKulik and staged numerous interventions in public spaces. It was for years (1971-1987) that they also ran the famed "Workshop of Actions, Documentation and Dissemination" in their apartments turned into studios, which were first located in the slum areas of Warsaw, and then moved to a suburban town of Łomianki near Warsaw. Their actions usually consisted of two stages: first a show was staged for a small group of spectators, and then it was documented with great care. Then the documentation was disseminated on hand made postcards, which were mailed to people dealing with art. Deprived of any possibilities to travel abroad over the period of 1974-1979, they staged such actions as the one devoted to passports and the condition of a Polish artist. After 1979 they got in touch with Joseph Beuys and became involved in the activities conducted by the Free University. As in the social hierarchy of those times they ranked next to a worker, in collaboration with Gerard Kwiatkowski and the EL gallery in Elbląg they published acclaimed “Art Worker’s Notebook” in 99 copies. When the Notebook was published by the bimonthly “Art” next to the "Appeal for an Alternative" by Joseph Beuys, its whole edition was shredded. Over the 15-month period of 1980-81, when the Solidarity trade union reigned, a new issue of the magazine was prepared and printed. Its distribution was to begin in December 1981, but it was then that the Martial Law was imposed by the Communist authorities.

In the second half of the 1980s this artistic couple began to drift apart. Kwiek was heading in the direction of more literal means of expression which would symbolise a condition of being closed in, such as grates, locks, chains, etc. Zofia Kulik began to seek new visual equivalents which were to define in a synthetic way what she had labelled as "Idioms of the Soc-era," and which could also be named as an iconosphere of the propaganda age. She confined herself to arduous documentation of the bits of reality, working on a model which was to "stand for" specific symbols, created links between objects and documents, ultimately to combine thousands of elements into a whole and to produce a large, clear-cut, photo "panneaux," which would in a way analyse the totalitarian iconosphere. Those photo paintings were frequently supplemented by the artist’s personal memorabilia and symbolic objects she had found, as well as by illuminated "ideal" models of totalitarian architecture coming from various epochs and cultures. It is symptomatic that her works were also ill-received by democratic authorities: recently the National Museum in Poznań stopped exhibiting some elements of her new work entitled "From Siberia to Cyberia."

Another artist who was deprived of his passport due to his art statements was Jerzy Kalina. He availed of various media, and was known for great imagination and curt statements. He made his first blunt artistic gestures in the early 1970s by painting his “hyper-realistic” paintings and installing at the “Współczesna” gallery podiums with live models standing still and covered with dry pigment. Parallel to that, at the "Repassage" gallery he staged semi-ritual actions which referred to such Polish and Christian customs as the "Last Supper," where he used genuine loaves of bread and potatoes. Some time later he executed the famous "Underground Passage." In downtown Warsaw he placed realistically arranged grey human figures at the edge of the sidewalk in such a way that they were gradually "submerging" under the street to "surface" on its other side. He became even more inventive in the days of the Martial Law, when he became the most radical author of underground exhibitions or actions. Such previously used props as bread or potatoes were supplemented by cabbage, stones and straw, which he used in his semi-theatrical actions staged at the Studio Theatre in Warsaw (which, quite paradoxically, has its premises in the building of The Palace of Culture, once dedicated to Stalin), or at parishes. Kalina also authored numerous Easter sepulchres or Christmas mangers displayed in Polish churches. One of the them, which was to symbolise the tragic death of Father Popiełuszko, who had been killed by secret police, was arranged in the boot of the Polish Fiat, where the Child was featured on a handful of straw.

Of quite different nature were the performances and street actions mounted by the Academy of Movement under the leadership of Wojciech Krukowski. They were held at various venues (such as the Dziekanka dormitory for art students, the Studio Theatre, the Współczesna gallery) and frequently took a form of “animated” pictures, such as the acclaimed Red Bus, which had first been painted by Wojciech Linke. Others referred either to historical events of current significance (A Day of the French Revolution) or to rituals (the Night Vigil). The purpose of such street actions was to involve passers-by and make them enter a different, more holiday-like reality. They were intertwined with the scenes featuring everyday Polish street (with police agents looming in the doorways of tenement houses). Highly moving was the staging of "Europe," a pre-war poem by Anatol Stern, on a day preceding the 1979 Christmas Eve. It was set against the Palace of Culture on one side of Marszałkowska Street (a street in down-town Warsaw), with crowds of people lining up in front of the stores on the other side of that street. That year temperatures were very low and Warsaw was covered with a thick layer of snow. Spotlights were operated from military vehicles and they would now and then light up small figures of poorly dressed people who were dropping down rags carrying such quotes from Stern’s poem as, e.g., "We who have meat only once a week..."

„Wprost" Backwards

Quite opposite in artistic terms were the works of critical and intervening nature, which were made by the Kraków artists of the "Wprost" (Point Blank) group in the second half of the 1970s. The group consisted of three painters: Maciej Bieniasz, Zybult Grzywacz and Leszek Sobocki, and one sculptor, Jacek Waltoś. The three painters were producing symbolic figurative paintings, partly in the vein of Jacek Malczewski’s works, and partly in the tradition of patriotic and historical works by Jan Matejko. Initially, they mainly focused on portraits of drab reality, featuring dirty walls, twisted letter boxes or dilapidated interiors. During the Martial Law, they began to work on didactic allegories of incarcerated and martyred Poland, which made clear references to Artur Grottger’s "Polonia" cycle painted in the middle of the 19^th century. Less pathetic were the paintings of the “Pieta w trójnasób” (Three Times Pieta) cycle by Jacek Waltoś, which was inspired by a newspaper photo of three workers praying in the spot-light. The works created by the members of the "Wprost" group during the Martial Law were highly topical and persuasive, and found numerous imitators. In similar vein were especially the paintings by two young artists from Kraków, Tadeusz Boruta, and his wife, Aldona Mickiewicz, even though they tried to enrich their works with greater spirituality and to prevent any literal interpretation of their message. In spite of Boruta’s conscious choice of the 19^th century realistic mannerism, his paintings stood the test of time owing to their universal message, even after the Martial Law was lifted and Poland embarked on a path towards democracy.

Creamy Gardens of Cognition

In the beginning of the 1970s the graduates of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts were inspired by a completely different line of thinking and pursued a different direction in their artistic quest. Despite its continued popularity, they found "plein-air and paper art" hardly appealing, and began to turn to more traditional values, mainly to figurative art. Since a little older generation of their colleagues tried to adapt Bacon’s concept of art in Poland, they began to seek inspiration either outside Europe, mainly in the United States, or in the Polish tradition of painting.

The most spectacular debut was made by a duo consisting of Jurry (Jerzy Zieliński) and Dobson (Jan Dobkowski), who formed the “Neo-Neo” group. During their first exhibition at the “Współczesna" gallery, they showed red and green canvasses covered by flat shapes (frequently bringing erotic associations) which were drawn with a decorative line typical of art deco. Those merry, slightly psychodelic paintings, which were in synch with the prevailing hippie sub-culture, were the only variety of Pop-Art that evolved in Poland. Soon, i.e., around 1972, those forms "left" the frames to walk into the streets and to live a life of their own. One could see them on the sidewalks: soft plastic apples, lips, breasts or phalluses. They were made of colourful plexiglass and painted plywood. But shortly afterwards the paintings returned were they belonged, and their authors followed their individual paths: Dobson began to draw increasingly more complex lines, enriched his colour palette and drifted towards greater eroticism of his paintings. Jurry opted in favour of a much darker palette and began to fill his canvasses with blunt, poster-like, ill-boding subject matter, thus bringing some of his paintings closer to Andrzej Wróblewski’s imagery and clear-cut conventions of colour use. But he did not work long. In 1980 he committed a suicide.

The early paintings by Łukasz Korolkiewicz had an aura of Hopper’s work, even though in terms of their technique – painting of slides – they were in the tradition of American hyper-realism, and in terms of framing – of Hockney’s earlier works. But in time, the atmosphere of his works began to thicken, turning mysterious and ambiguous. After many years of recording the "reality of the Martial Law," the artist returned to featuring gardens with little girls, or interiors with many mirrors which reflected not quite a genuine world and his own naked silhouette.

Korolkiewicz was a member of a social rather than artistic group, which was called “Śmietanka” (the “Cream” of the artists) and consisted of Ewa Kuryluk, Andrzej Bielawski, Andrzej Bieńkowski and Jan Dobkowski. In the second half of the 1970s it mounted a few exhibitions (“Bok wyspy”/ The Side of an Island/, “Ogród poznania” /The Garden of Cognition/, and “Śmietanka” /The “Creme de la Creme/) at the “MDM” gallery, which showed works by various generations of artists. The group maintained contacts with such artists of their own generation as Tomasz Ciecierski, Edward Dwurnik, Włodzimierz J. Zakrzewski or Adam Myjak, the only sculptor among them. They all tried to live in a beautiful world of “art and literature,” which would not admit any realities of everyday life in the Communist system. But each of them expressed this escapism in a different way.

Ewa Kuryluk, being an educated person inclined towards philosophy who also wrote novels and dissertations, expressed only a part of her personality in her paintings, which she ultimately abandoned for a specific kind of drawing. She draws herself and – sometimes – her intentions on crinkled and loose sheets of fabric, thus hiding her mishaps in their folds and creating new and highly original "Weronika’s Kerchiefs."

Andrzej Bieńkowski started by painting pastel scenes and Egyptian deities set against a desert-like landscape. In the 1980s he became seriously involved in ethnographic studies of Polish folk music. It was then that he started to paint poor amateur musicians dressed in quilted jackets, a forgotten world of distant suburbia and declining villages. Owing to his technique, whereby he puts colour on sand and plaster groundwork, those scenes turn into an epic worth to be recorded on frescos.

At the beginning of the 1980s, once highly "bohemian" Andrzej Bielawski also underwent a metamorphosis. He became interested in the "cobble-stone poetics" and the beauty of a brick wall, and began working on large and heavy paintings featuring fragments of Polish reality. Parallel to that, he also got interested in Process Art and made his paintings out of metal sheets previously used as matrices for steel-etchings.

Włodzimierz Jan Zakrzewski spent years analysing the nature of landscape and painting almost academic still natures. The output of his analysis ranged from "action painting" to geometric abstraction. In time, he began to focus on his autobiography. He tried to reconcile on one canvass the memory of the places he had seen, individual events, both personal and public, and to penetrate his own identity of a man and an artist. What we see in Zakrzewski’s paintings are overlapping pictures, drawings, symbols, which do not always add up to form one semantic whole. As if they were scraps of memories mixed with dreams.

The memory of events and places, as well as a discourse about painting are what interests Tomasz Ciecierski. Though marked by superb mastery of technique clearly in the tradition of "Kapizm," his paintings are disrupted by real, physical "inserts" from another reality. One image is covered by another image. His paintings are multi-layered and stimulate a discussion on such subjects as painting as an object, painting as a conventional, painted reality, or a mirror of that reality, a painting in a painting, and a "view"- a landscape - and the way it is remembered and then retrieved from our memory or imagination.

Early works by Edward Dwurnik were distinctly different from those by his colleagues. He was the only artist not to turn his back on reality, but instead to go as far as to chronicle it. His canvasses were filled with a multitude of houses, squares and people, typical of small towns and suburban areas. Merciless in his observation and crude in his communication manner, he both eulogised and ridiculed provincial Poland – with its dirt, poverty and quarrels. This theme is present – in numerous variations and arrangements – in all his works, which are supplemented by kilometres of more or less malicious notes on Poland’s everyday life. Parallel to that, he also worked on a series of paintings – quite opposite in their atmosphere and painting manner – of almost epic nature due to their historical subject matter and comments on Poland’s current political events. Additionally, as if to prove a great potential of his talent, he also painted marine landscapes, portrayed groups of people, and recently, also flowers. But no matter what their subject matter is, his paintings seem to sneer at the vocation of an artist and to reflect Dwurnik’s distance to such notions commonly used in art, as a "personal style" or an "artist’s ethos."

Some of both early and later works by Adam Myjak, twice the rector of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, resound with some echoes of his academic provenance. If one were to make any analogies, however, they would need to be with modern painting, with the cry of the New Figuration, but first and foremost, with the paintings by Francis Bacon. Myjak’s early self-portraits may be viewed as an attempt to impersonate the British painter, to get into his skin, to see himself as if he were Bacon himself. Or another suffering and humiliated, crazy old man. His entire artistic track record – now spanning nearly thirty years - seems to be a quest of a border between existence and non-existence. In a metaphysical sense of the word. Because in reality a sculpture exists in a strikingly tangible way. It has its own metaphysics, its weight, its lustre, its own corrosion and, ultimately, also its own decline. It is split apart as if with a sabre. It is punctured, it is marked by its own scars and growths. It stands upright and slim like Giacometti’s sculptures, or spills as if made of batter. It experiences alien interpolations which fissure the stone’s order, or interfere with the structure of bronze, but it continues to remain a self-portrait in somebody else’s body.

A Prolific Martial Law

Around 1980 a clear gap of attitudes became evident in Poland. On the one side, there were artists seeking new areas of artistic freedom, sometimes identified with civic freedoms, and on the other – authors producing "modern" works of art complying with the aesthetics of the 1950s and 1960s, which were labelled by Janusz Bogucki as "artistic art." In between there were also the representatives of patriotic orientation, who willingly resorted to a wide range of available allegories. The latter were willingly accepted by the alternative movement, which centred around the Catholic church after the December of 1981 (when the Martial law was imposed). It needs to be added at this point that in compliance with Polish tradition and its specific ethos, the unofficial artistic life attracted nearly all people working in Polish culture, including writers, journalists, film directors, actors and artists. The church became an "asylum of the majority," and the rhetoric of those works was much more successful in terms of their persuasive and propaganda effect than Socialist Realism, which frequently availed of similar stylistics or a language of persuasion, but was championed without much sincerity.

Quite fresh and greatly appealing were the works by the artists of the youngest generation, who played with post-Modernistic meanings and thus rid the subject matter of excessive pathos. Many of them made references to Polish literature, mainly to Witkacy and Gombrowicz. The only Polish artist who was invoked by them was Andrzej Wróblewski, whose work was now perceived in a fresh and different way. Sometimes the name of Jerzy “Jurra” Zieliński, a prematurely diseased art rebel, would come up. The youngest generation of artists, who made their debut during the Martial Law, championed the expressionist orientation in painting, but for much more important reasons than their predecessors. In spite of various difficulties that emerged in the social and artistic life of the 1980s, the statements made by this generation of artists in a society, which was divided and engaged in a struggle, were very powerful and enjoyed a broad public appeal. Numerous exhibitions of alternative art were mounted in all possible and accessible places, frequently at churches or at any other institutions that had nothing to do with state authorities. Owing to the situation that directly resulted from the Martial Law, new artistic groups began to emerge, which was a very interesting phenomenon of that time. The dysfunction of artistic state agencies, whose task was to ensure greater throughput of art distribution, stimulated the growth of their substitutes in a form of various groups – grass-root communities established instinctively or spontaneously, which were to care and protect, and help with art promotion. The best example of how such a grass-root group would operate is offered by “Gruppa” affiliating six Warsaw painters (Ryszard Grzyb, Paweł Kowalewski, Jarosław Modzelewski, Włodzimierz Pawlak, Marek Sobczyk and Ryszard Woźniak). Although they differed in their tastes, temperaments and artistic interests, they were able to create an "added value" in their joint activity, a situational surplus that could not be generated in the solitude of one’s studio or on one’s own. A series of their shows and "recitals" invoking the poetics of the absurd have no counterparts in Polish artistic tradition. The subject-matter of those "spectacles," which was hard to swallow, and at times even obscene or disconcerting, breached all canons of decency, bringing them close to anarchistic sub-cultures of the city of Łódź.

Two other groups were also very active in the 1980s: the “Koło Klipsa” of Poznań, with its most eminent member, Mariusz Kruk, and the “Neue Bieriemiennost” group, where Mirosław Pałka was a pivotal figure. After several years of demonstrative independence, as reflected in their works of art, their individual personalities began to emerge offering highly individual, at times even individualistic, artistic proposals. For both Kruk and Bałka quickly shed their incubators of talent, which role was assumed by their groups, since they no longer offered appropriate partners or artistic inspirations. The former, who was demonstratively opposed to cool intellectualism which then reigned among the graduates of the Poznań Academy of Fine Arts, made references to child imagination and created lyrical, fable-like objects "excavated" from a painting (usually a pastel drawing), which were allowed to materialise in the third dimension. In time, child imagination gave way to existential dramas that unfolded between real objects, carriers of our human problems.

It was childhood again, though rooted in local and highly specific family environment, and marked by universal experience originating from literature, religion and custom, that was an object of artistic exegesis in the early phase of Mirosław Bałka’s work. His figurative sculptures he then made – which were realistic in their modelling – were already “sensitive” to material and carried certain meanings. In the process of form evolution, the figure was replaced by a conjectured trace of existence, a memory of some presence prompted by anthropomorphic dimensions of objects and emphasised by the choice of material.

Almost parallel to the emergence of the "Gruppa," a debut was made by Leon Tarasewicz, one of the few artists who did not get involved in the political-social discourse. Right from the start of his career he was interested in the prospects of reviving the formula of landscape that would comply with the most fundamental values worked out by Polish Colourists, on the one hand, and the discipline of the "Unists," on the other hand. He tried to go beyond occasional gestures in his search of universal values and thus to rescue the art of painting.

The election of 1989, in which Solidarity candidates won by a landslide, and a relatively low rate of political bickering in the newly emerging democracy, deprived many "heroes" of the Martial Law of their instruments of occasional persuasion. All values had to be revisited again. Colourful and dynamic artistic life, which was anti-Communist by principle, was replaced by a laborious everyday effort of creating much more durable values than occasional gestures. The area in which artists could play their games with the authorities, which became well identified and even domesticated after a lapse of several decades – and which could serve as an artistic benchmark – was replaced by an area of market competition, where the current axiology of Polish art was defeated. The category of decency became obliterated, the factor of unselfishness – which played such a constructive role in the Polish art ethos – got lost somewhere. In the chaos of the transition period there was a clear shortage of new, indigenous criteria, which could serve as a material out of which a new Polish identity could be built.

Freedom was no longer an immediate goal. It turned into one more utopia and a subject of discourse for the generation of the 1990s.

The City of Łódź In-between “Łódź Kaliska” and “Łódź Fabryczna,” and Alternative Wrocław

It was in Łódź, a proletariat city with a strong Constructivist tradition cherished by the eminent film school and the only museum of modern art in Poland, that local artists embarked on their quest marked by strong social interest, which stemmed from utopian artistic programmes. It was quite natural that multimedia experiments, involving photos, videos, experimental film and sound, were initiated in 1969 by Józef Robakowski, Andrzej Różycki, Wojciech Bruszewski, Zbigniew Rybczyński, later on an Oscar-winner in the category of animated film, or Antoni Mikołajczyk, and soon afterwards, also by Ryszard Waśka. They culminated in an event, quite unprecedented in the history of European art, known as the “Construction in Process,” which was mounted by Ryszard Waśka only a month prior to the imposition of Martial Law. This convention of art stars from all over the world, who came to work for the city without any remuneration, was held to the accompaniment of an unfolding revolution, where no blood was shed, and the strikes mounted by textile workers, and quite unexpectedly succeeded in reviving, and even in incarnating, the Constructivist utopia

Łódź was also a birth place of most important anarchistic movements which tried to revisit the values cherished by domesticated Modernism and Neo-Avant-garde. This “revision” was usually conducted collectively (by the groups known as Łódź Kaliska, Łódź Fabryczna /both being the names of railway stations in Łódź/, or Strych /the Attic/), by such means which, without any ado, disclosed the pathos of "artism." The groups aimed at "disrupting" and mocking the official artistic life. So they came up with such initiatives as "Kultura zrzuty" (Culture of Landings) or the "Tango" magazine (operating outside censorship) and a series of interventions which ridiculed and disrupted serious scientific meetings.

In response to the terror of the Martial Law or pathos-ridden exhibitions mounted by the Church, the Wrocław “Orange Alternative" launched street actions which were used as an absurd weapon and left the police force helpless and unable to intervene. Merry young people in funny clothes staged their actions under such positive and hardly questionable slogans as, e.g., "We are celebrating an anniversary of the October Revolution,” or “I am sensitive to your problems,” or “Getting peacefully old on Świdnicka street” ( being one of Wrocław’s main streets), or “Santas are the leading power of the nation.” They also celebrated the "Revolution of the dwarfs," and mounted a special happening on the 20^th anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops. People in the streets had fun equal to that one people experience during the carnival, and the police could hardly claim that an offence was committed.

The Post-industrial Blues

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new generation that matured in the days of the Martial Law stepped into the arena of Polish art. They were familiar with rapid shifts of opinion, conversions to a new, capitalist ideology, and claims of the artists who demanded moral and financial indemnities for their recent struggle against the Communist system. Poland saw the landing of highly automated Western offer in a form of large mega-stores filled with standardised goods, the MacDonald, KFC and Pizza Hut chains, the most recent brands of cars and rapid computers. In a matter of a few years, the entire ethos of struggle, including the art ethos, became diluted.

Young artists responded to the most recent developments in a variety of ways, but the most typical attitude was for them to turn their backs on all generally recognised values, and instead to focus on non-artistic world, or to penetrate one’s own identity. But no matter what their approach to present day art or its subject-matter was, most of them entered into a dialogue with today’s reality which has become, quite naturally, less Polish but more global. This dialogue manifests itself in glosses and predominantly cool self-commentaries, and reflects what things are really like when despoiled of mythology and mystery.

In the works by Robert Rumas the world of myths, religion and tradition, so deeply rooted in our civilisation, is juxtaposed with a cold world of post-industrial era with its TV-sets, computers and characters from Japanese cartoons. He arrangements are confronted with the products of consumption and excretion.

Katarzyna Kozyra is an artist who brought to the surface the most embarrassing sides of social life in the boldest and most controversial manner. Already in her diploma work "The Pyramid of Animals" she made us confront the facts of which we either do not want or do not like to know. She featured the process of animal slaughtering and dismembering, she showed mutilated bodies and the process of hospital treatment, she penetrated a mysterious world of ablution, very distant from the 19^th century tradition of painting. Finally, she dared transgress her sexual identity by breaching another taboo and stepping into the world of naked men. She confronts her own observations with the archetypes present in Haute, recognised art of such artists as Ingres (Bath I), Manet (Olimpia) or well known works of literature (The Musicians of Bremen).

Identity is also a focus of attention of Zuzanna Janin. Her search is, however, of more personal, or even personalistic nature. She draws circles around all possible aspects of her existence by making double-dealing, soft sculptures of silk which are juxtaposed with rough and unwelcome surface of construction forms made of coarse-grained sandpaper; by studying her family according to matriarchal order; by featuring fragments of human body in magnified photos and by resorting to their multiple, overlapping "projection." Her most recent cycle consists of three-dimensional, transparent and virtual computer models of a woman’s body, a skull or a car turned upside down, which are shown side by side with video films. At her presentations she always keeps some extra "attractions" in store by inviting her guests to try sugar cotton or a game with electric cars, or by creating various obstacles – an inflatable sidewalk which sinks when one approaches her works, or thick mist. All that is to evoke associations with an "amusement park," where anything may happen.

The study of one’s own body and making it "objective” is what interests Alicja Żebrowska, who filmed a drastic delivery of a Barbie doll, Jadwiga Sawicka or Joanna Rajkowska.

Like Katarzyna Kozyra, also interested in subjects related to sickness and physical disability is Artur Żmijewski, who made films and photographs on that subject. He also makes special devices, or rather furniture, that may be used for voyeuristic purposes.

All the works by Zbigniew Libera refer to an artificial world of values created by industry. He is the author of a "new generation" of Lego blocks (Auschwitz), Barbie dolls (Ken’s Aunt), dolls used to teach anatomy, and work-out instruments (A Penis Expander, A Body Building Machine for Children) or easy-to-apply suppositories.

Quite opposite a response to present day prosperity is offered by Paweł Althamer, perhaps the only young artist with a sentimental attitude to everyday world of "lower rank" things, which are considered to be ugly, devoid of good taste and elegance. He exposes them "in situ," as relics of the times gone and reminders of our former warm attitude to things. It may be said that Althamer actually does not create works of art, but rather uses existing objects and thus raises them to a higher rank.

Tatiana Czekalska and Leszek Golec also do not create works of art in the conventional sense of the term. Their creative process has much in common with a study of spiritual and biological hygiene of human beings, but especially of animals. Their main preoccupation to date is to build shelters for such small creatures as insects or birds, so that they could survive highly invasive effects of the advance of our civilisation.