DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31381#0022
20
THE HISTORY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COLLECTION
with Jan Kolanowski as the author of the plastic setting and opened in 1982, following
the break caused by the overhaul of the old part of the building.
In 1991, when the extension works on the Main Building were finished
and new exhibition rooms opened on the 2nd floor, a fundamental change was brought
to the scenario of the Gallery of 20th Polish Century Art. This time, Mieczyslaw Por^bski
in cooperation with the team headed by Zofia Golubiew and with Jan Kolanowski as the
exhibition’s arranger, suggested a new conception of the Gallery, substituting the
chronological criterion with a problem - setting, which gives us a fuller and at the same
time different perspective on Polish art of the 20 th century. Availing himself of the layout
of the exhibition rooms, Por^bski distinguished four principal knots, grasping four
essential artistic phenomena: the creative output of Jacek Malczewski, Jozef Pankiewicz,
Jerzy Nowosielski and the artists from the circle of the exhibition in “The Arsenal”. On
Malczewski’s side — claimed Mieczyslaw Por^bski — we can find paintings closer to
symbolic thought, to exposing a certain content, while Pankiewicz is a patron of a trend
towards pure art, towards painting that is self-explanatory and self-supporting. This
problem has of course been signalled only by means of slogans, but I perceive these two
tendencies in Polish art as complementing rather than opposing each other, and along
such lines I have tried to divide this collection. Por^bski’s arrangement, sometimes
surprising by its unexpected juxtapositions, inclines the viewer towards a free
circulation, towards regresses into the past and returns to the present day.
The Gallery of Polish Art of 20th Century in the Main Building of the
Cracovian National Museum is the widest museum display of this sort in Poland. The
complex of works from the 1st half of our century exhibited here demonstrates
a diversity of artistic problems inherent in the painting of that epoch, and simultaneously
— through the confrontation with contemporary art — its topicality.
Stefania Kozakowska, Barbara Malkiewicz
THE HISTORY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COLLECTION
with Jan Kolanowski as the author of the plastic setting and opened in 1982, following
the break caused by the overhaul of the old part of the building.
In 1991, when the extension works on the Main Building were finished
and new exhibition rooms opened on the 2nd floor, a fundamental change was brought
to the scenario of the Gallery of 20th Polish Century Art. This time, Mieczyslaw Por^bski
in cooperation with the team headed by Zofia Golubiew and with Jan Kolanowski as the
exhibition’s arranger, suggested a new conception of the Gallery, substituting the
chronological criterion with a problem - setting, which gives us a fuller and at the same
time different perspective on Polish art of the 20 th century. Availing himself of the layout
of the exhibition rooms, Por^bski distinguished four principal knots, grasping four
essential artistic phenomena: the creative output of Jacek Malczewski, Jozef Pankiewicz,
Jerzy Nowosielski and the artists from the circle of the exhibition in “The Arsenal”. On
Malczewski’s side — claimed Mieczyslaw Por^bski — we can find paintings closer to
symbolic thought, to exposing a certain content, while Pankiewicz is a patron of a trend
towards pure art, towards painting that is self-explanatory and self-supporting. This
problem has of course been signalled only by means of slogans, but I perceive these two
tendencies in Polish art as complementing rather than opposing each other, and along
such lines I have tried to divide this collection. Por^bski’s arrangement, sometimes
surprising by its unexpected juxtapositions, inclines the viewer towards a free
circulation, towards regresses into the past and returns to the present day.
The Gallery of Polish Art of 20th Century in the Main Building of the
Cracovian National Museum is the widest museum display of this sort in Poland. The
complex of works from the 1st half of our century exhibited here demonstrates
a diversity of artistic problems inherent in the painting of that epoch, and simultaneously
— through the confrontation with contemporary art — its topicality.
Stefania Kozakowska, Barbara Malkiewicz