Polish Modern Art. Painting-graphics-sculpture in the thirties
November 7, 2007 – January 27, 2008
Scenario and arrangement of the exhibition Anna Król
The exhibition presents three selected art phenomena of the 1930s in Poland: art at the 1939 World Exhibition in New York, the phenomenon of Zofia Stryjeńska and the industrial landscape.
New York 1939 The main idea of the 1939 World Exhibition in New York, prepared under the slogan “Building the World of Tomorrow,” was to present the latest developments in technology, science and art. The main task of the show was to mitigate the effects of the crisis, which had been going on for several years, and to show new, attractive and optimistic perspectives.
The Polish Pavilion, prepared by a team of young, little-known artists, was well received. Objects were selected in such a way as to clearly present Poland’s history, tradition juxtaposed with modernity. The slogan of the Polish Pavilion was: “We have been around for a thousand years.”
Mieczyslaw Treter, curator of the “Art” section, presented the author’s consistent and decisive selection. He presented artists who dialogued with tradition in various ways, representatives of the official and recognized trend of Polish art of the interwar period – members of the Brotherhood of St. Luke (who did the main painting decorations), the Zwornik association, Jednoróg and representatives of the RYTM grouping, as well as great individualities of Polish art, not associated with any grouping, artists working alone in France (including Olga Boznańska).
The exhibition – for the first time in the country – presents not only the artists who participated in the exhibition, but above all the works, exhibited there.
Stryjeńska. In the Polish culture of the interwar period, only one figure emerged with a force unusual and incomparable to anyone else. This was Zofia Stryjeńska and the next part of the exhibition is dedicated to her work. According to Joanna Sosnowska, “Stryjeńska’s phenomenon finds no comparison among female artists of the first half of the 20th century in all of Europe. In no country has a woman achieved such high prestige in the artistic world, nowhere has her voice become the dominant voice, and therefore imposing a way of perceiving and shaping reality.” We present a little-known collection of the artist’s works, numbering more than forty works, donated to the city of Tarnów by Father Alfred Nosal, and illustrating almost all themes in her work.
Capacitors from Chorzow. The third part of the exhibition signals a phenomenon that has never before been more widely presented, but which appeared in Polish art of the 1930s: the industrial landscape. Upper Silesia, the construction of Gdynia, CID interested and intrigued Polish artists. They made trips to see newly erected investments and functioning factories and mines. The author of this new genre was Rafal Malczewski, who painted “industrial magical landscapes.” In the 1930s, he produced a whole series of works – oil paintings, prints, drawings and watercolors – depicting the alien, menacing, sometimes hostile to man, industrial landscape.
Works for the exhibition were borrowed from the Museum in Chorzow, the National Museum in Warsaw, the National Museum in Szczecin, the Tarnów Collection of Zofia Stryjeńska (a deposit from the District Museum in Tarnów), the District Museum in Torun, the Silesian Museum in Katowice, as well as from the collection of Tom Podel (USA) and the collection of Marek Sosenka from Cracow.
Scenario and arrangement of the exhibition Anna Król
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog.
