A Surprising Outdoor Gallery: Poland’s Folk Bus Stops
If you happen to be travelling by bus through central Poland, you might be in for a pleasant surprise. Thirteen bus stops in small villages near the city of Łódź have been embellished with amazing murals of classic Polish paintings. These so-called ‘Folk Bus Stops’ create a unique outdoor gallery that brings art to rural areas and constitutes a marvellous tourist attraction.
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‘Indian Summer’ by Józef Chełmoński, reproduction by Sylwester Stabryła, Folk Bus Stop in Nowy Pudłów, photo: Barbara Gortat / Fundacja Tu Brzoza
The bus stop plays a vital role in the life of small Polish villages. It’s often one of the handful of publicly available places and a focal point for the local community. It’s also a symbolic gateway to the wider world that lies beyond the village.
In 2015 Barbara Gortat, a native of Nowy Pudłów – a small village near the city of Łódź in central Poland – came up with a great idea on how to preserve the local dilapidated brick bus stop. She had it renovated and asked the award-winning painter Sylwester Stabryła to adorn it with a reproduction of the famous 19th-century Polish painting Babie Lato (Indian Summer) by Józef Chełmoński. The whole project was coordinated by the Tu Brzoza Foundation, which aims to facilitate social, cultural, artistic and ecological development.
Since then, thanks to the foundation, twelve other countryside brick bus stops in the vicinity of Nowy Pudłów have been embellished with stunning murals. These stops constitute a unique outdoor gallery. They mainly sport reproductions of classic Polish paintings; three of them are adorned with original artwork. The murals in this gallery are linked to rural traditions and folklore. Gortat explains:
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The main motif of our gallery is significant – the reproduced or originally created works are rooted […] in countryside symbols: farm work, the love of nature as well as fading local traditions.
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From zwierciadlo.pl, trans. MK
Spring, storks & sunflowers
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‘Spring’ by Jacek Malczewski, reproduction by Sylwester Stabryła, Folk Bus Stop in Anusin, photo: Barbara Gortat / Fundacja Tu Brzoza
The bus stop reproductions aren’t always exact copies of their originals. In some cases, they’re tailored to fit the brick constructions and sometimes they exhibit – to a certain extent – the styles of their creators, of whom there are four.
As mentioned before, Sylwester Stabryła painted the first reproduction in the series depicting Indian Summer. This celebrated piece was originally created in 1875 by the acclaimed realist painter Józef Chełmoński (1849-1914). Here’s how it’s described by Culture.pl’s Magdalena Wróblewska:
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Under a cloudy sky, a barefoot girl wearing a white skirt and shirt lies on the dun ground, playing with a thread of gossamer held in her lifted hand.
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From Culture.pl’s article on ‘Indian Summer’
In 2018, Stabryła authored two further reproductions for the Here’s a Birch Foundation. He created a mural showing Panna Młoda w Stroju Krakowskim (Young Bride in Kraków Dress) by Piotr Stachiewicz for the bus stop in Busina. This noted painter lived from 1858 to 1938 and is especially valued for his portrayals of women clad in traditional Kraków folk costumes. As its title implies, Young Bride in Kraków Dress is one of these portrayals. Unfortunately, the creation date of this charming piece is hard to determine. Stabryła’s other bus stop mural from 2018 was painted in Anusin; it shows Jacek Malczewski’s 1900 work Wiosna (Spring). Malczewski, who lived from 1854 to 1929, was one of Poland’s most important symbolist painters. His masterful Spring shows an allegorical depiction of the titular season as a woman:
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Energetic, smiling and plump – her entire person is evocative of Spring vitality.
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From niezlasztuka.net, trans. MK
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‘Harvest’ by Włodzimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, reproduction by Natalia Grala, Folk Bus Stop in Wólka, photo: Fundacja Tu Brzoza
Two reproductions for Folk Bus Stops were also authored in 2018 by Natalia Grala, a painter and glass artist hailing from the village of Maksymilianów near Łódź. In Wólka, she created a mural showing Żniwa (Harvest) by the eminent modernist painter Włodzimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer (1861- 1923). In this 1902 canvas, the artist appears to draw a parallel between the life-giving power of the woman holding a baby in the forefront and the nurturing power of the land producing crops. Grala’s other 2018 mural was painted on a bus stop in Feliksów and presents Jacek Malczewski’s Ojczyzna (Fatherland). This beautiful work shows a woman and two children with a flowery meadow in the background:
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The woman in Jacek Malczewski’s painting is a personification of Poland – a pained mother looking for a happy place in the world for herself and her children. […] The piece was authored in 1903 when Poland – divided between the three partitioning powers – wasn’t present on the map of Europe.
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From mnwr.pl, trans. MK
Stabryła embellished three further bus stops with reproductions in 2020. In Chropy, he created a mural showing 1875’s Na Pastwisku (The Pasture) by Stanisław Witkiewicz, a renowned realist painter and art theoretician who lived from 1851 to 1915. Culture.pl’s Piotr Policht in his description of this piece writes that it shows ‘a young shepherdess resting on a [rocky] field under a heavy, leaden sky, tenderly turning to one of her sheep.’ Another 2020 mural by Stabryła appeared in Sędów, where the local bus stop was adorned with a reproduction of Julian Fałat’s Kobieta z Kurą (Woman with a Hen). Julian Fałat (1853- 1929) is best remembered as an outstanding landscape painter, but in the 1880s he made several works showing the life of peasants. Woman with a Hen, from around 1885, appears to be one of these works – it’s a wonderful portrayal of a young woman tenderly holding a female chicken.
Also in 2020, Stabryła ornamented the bus stop in Jeżew with two murals showing pastels by the modernist painter and dramatist Stanisław Wyspiański (1869-1907). One of them is a reproduction of Słoneczniki (Sunflowers) from 1895, a marvellous depiction of the titular flowers created as a polychrome design for Kraków's Franciscan Church, which was decorated by Wyspiański. The other mural in Jeżew presents 1905’s Portret Józia Feldmana (Portrait of Józio Feldman), a delightful likeness of the son of Wyspiański’s friend, the literary critic and playwright Wilhelm Feldman. At this point one might add that this reproduction is the only one of the Folk Bus Stops collection whose original link to the countryside seem unclear (not that that should be a problem).
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‘Rural Backyard’ by Tadeusz Makowski, reproduction by Olga Pelipas, Folk Bus Stop in Drużbin, photo: Barbara Gortat / Fundacja Tu Brzoza
Another 2020 reproduction for the Here’s a Birch Foundation was created by Olga Pelipas, a graduate of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts. On the bus stop in Drużbin she authored a mural depicting Wiejskie Podwórko (Rural Backyard) by the notable painter Tadeusz Makowski, who lived between 1882 and 1932. Rural Backyard was originally painted in 1928 and in it you can see a doll-like child standing next to farm birds.
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By 1928, a year that was a milestone in the artist's career, Makowski had arrived at a highly individual style of rendering his subjects, one unique within the context of European art. Generalized forms were now surrounded with contour lines that rendered them geometric.
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From Tadeusz Makowski’s bio at Culture.pl
The year 2020 also saw the creation of a Folk Bus Stop reproduction by Marcin Jaszczak, a graduate of the Łódź Academy of Fine Arts. His mural presenting Józef Chełmoński’s 1900-piece Bociany (Storks) was painted in Brudnów. Here’s how the magnificent Storks is described on the website of its owner, the National Museum in Warsaw:
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A spring view of the Polish countryside […], at noon. During his lunch break, a ploughman and his son admire a muster of storks in the sky.
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From cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl, trans. MK
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Folk Bus Stop in Pudłówek, artwork by Natalia Grala, photo: Barbara Gortat / Fundacja Tu Brzoza
As mentioned before, three of the Folk Bus Stops were adorned with original artworks. The first of this trio, the stop in Pudłówek, was decorated by Natalia Grala in 2016. Inside the brick construction she painted a splendid mural showing two men clad in folk costumes characteristic of the region of Sieradz, a town in the vicinity of Pudłówek. The exterior walls of the stop were embellished with colourful patterns referencing traditional Sieradz paper cut-outs. Interestingly, using the stained-glass technique, Grala extended these patterns over the stop’s windows. Thanks to Grala, the bus stop in Pudłówek became a real feast for the eyes.
A year later, Sylwester Stabryła created an authorial mural for Here’s a Birch in Góra Bałdrzychowska. He adorned the local bus stop with an intriguing scene inspired by Chłopi (The Peasants), a novel by the Polish Nobel Prize in Literature winner Władysław Reymont (1867-1925). The Peasants, published in instalments in the press in the 1900s, captivatingly portrays the life of a rural community located nearby Łódź over the course of a full year.
The third Folk Bus Stop embellished with original art was in Rudniki. In 2020, a fabulous mural showing a rusałka or a female daemon from Slavic mythology appeared in that village. Here’s how Barbara Gortat commented on this piece:
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In Rudniki, Marcin Jaszczak painted a contemporary impression – a beautiful portrait of a girl with a wreath on her head, referencing motifs appearing in our […] gallery and in his works, which include many forest spirits, a nymph and rusałka; the local bus stop was graced by the Rudniki Rusałka.
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From transport-publiczny.pl, trans. MK
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‘Rudniki Rusałka’ by Marcin Jaszczak, Folk Bus Stop in Rudniki, photo: Barbara Gortat / Fundacja Tu Brzoza
All the bus stops transformed by the Here’s a Birch Foundation are still in use. Thanks to the murals by Stabryła, Grala, Pelipas and Jaszczak the people who arrive at these stops are exposed to celebrated art. This is especially valuable in a rural area where physical access to art is limited by the remoteness of museums.
The inhabitants of the villages where the Folk Bus Stops are located have found them very pleasing. In a 2020 TV reportage about Here’s a Birch’s project, Ms. Agnieszka Gortat, a resident of Chropy, said the following about her local mural:
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The bus stop is very pretty, whoever drives by stops and takes a pretty picture because they haven’t seen such artworks, in the countryside of course.
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From dziendobry.tvn.pl, trans. MK
However, the said murals are an attraction not only for passers-by and locals; they also attract tourists, for example, from Łódź. Apparently, tourist bicycle tours along the trail of the Folk Bus Stops, which extends over about 50 kilometres, have become a popular way of appreciating them. In order to make visiting the Folk Bus Stops easier, Here’s a Birch has prepared a special map in Google Maps which shows all their locations. You can find it here.
The beauty of the countryside
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‘The Pasture’ by Stanisław Witkiewicz, reproduction by Sylwester Stabryła, Folk Bus Stop in Chropy, photo: Barbara Gortat / Fundacja Tu Brzoza
The Here’s a Birch Foundation has taken a short break from creating new additions to the Folk Bus Stops, but two new ones will be created this year – allowing this amazing outdoor gallery will continue to grow!
To wrap things up, let’s mention a somewhat similar project that was carried out in Czarny Las. In 2019, six bus stops in this village – near Warsaw – were adorned with printed reproductions of paintings by Józef Chełmoński. It’s worth adding that this artist used to live and work in the neighbouring village of Kuklówka Zarzeczna. On the aforementioned Czarny Las bus stops you can see large-format copies of such wonderful pieces as Kaczeńce (Cowslips), Wiosna (Springtime) or Polna Droga (Field Track).
As you can now see, riding a bus through Polish villages can be quite a pleasant adventure. Passengers can not only contemplate the beauty of the countryside but also encounter fabulous artworks!
Written by Marek Kępa, Dec 21
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