An Artistic Guide Around the City of Tarnów
From Renaissance tombs through modernist gems to discreet sculptures by the most eminent contemporary artists. Dear explorer, we present you with the most outstanding works of art scattered around the streets, parks, houses, churches and factories of Tarnów.
Giovanni Maria Mosca, Tomb of Jan Tarnowski and Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski, 1561-1574, Tarnów Cathedral
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Giovanni Maria Mosca, Tomb of Jan Tarnowski and Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski, 1561-1574, Tarnów Cathedral
The thriving centre of Renaissance art, which was Kraków of the Jagiellonian dynasty, also radiated to nearby Tarnów. Even though we won’t find as many works of Renaissance architecture and sculptures here as in the former capital of the Republic, it does not mean that those preserved reflect the architectural style of Wawel. It is the Tarnów Cathedral that houses the most majestic and one of the most artistically outstanding sepulchral sculptures of the Renaissance – the tomb of Jan Tarnowski and Jan Krzysztof Tarnowski carved by the royal sculptor Giovanni Maria Mosca, who came from Padua, Italy. Commenced by the sculptor in 1561, the sepulchrum was initially intended only for Hetman Jan Tarnowski. However, its final form was dictated by the premature death of his son. Made of several types of stone, including red and white marble, the sepulchrum is distinguished by equally rich iconography, to which Jan Kochanowski, a friend of the hetman and participant in his funeral, is believed to have allegedly added his two cents.
Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz, Mausoleum of General Józef Bem, 1928-1929, Strzelecki Park
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The Mausoleum of General Józef Bem, designed by Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz, Tarnów, photo: Dariusz Zarod/East News
Tarnów has been lucky in terms of spectacular burial monuments. The second of the most outstanding architectural and sculptural works in the city is the burial monument of General Józef Bem, erected in the late 1920s. Its monumental silhouette, emerging from behind the trees of Strzelecki Park and mirrored in the smooth surface of the artificial pond, embodies the propaganda significance of bringing the ashes of the general, who died more than half a century earlier, to his hometown. This astute military man, engineer and political activist, whose life story could easily form the basis of a whole series of adventure novels, lived out his life in Aleppo, serving in the Turkish army towards the end of his life. Before that, he was preserved in textbooks as a national hero of Poland and Hungary. The general's ashes brought to Poland were thus transported with great pomp, with stops in Budapest and Wawel on the way.
The only minor problem was that Bem, aka Murad Pasha, had converted to Islam before joining the Sultan's army, so he could not be buried in a Catholic cemetery. The designer of the mausoleum – architect and restorer Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz, a favourite of the Sanacja elite, who with his style oscillating between monumental classicism and modernism perfectly matched the needs of the authorities of the reborn Poland – coped with this limitation. The General was therefore not buried in consecrated ground, but several metres above it, in a simple sarcophagus supported by columns with Corinthian capitals, in a form that perfectly balances classical pathos with a subtle integration into the landscape.
The posthumous journey of the general was recently reconstructed by Przemek Branas, an artist who, in the course of a several-stage performance, travelled in the opposite direction, from the Tarnów mausoleum to a mosque on the Turkish-Syrian border.
Maurycy Gomulicki, 'Melancholy', 2013, Strzelecki Park
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Maurycy Gomulicki, 'Melancholy', BWA Tarnów, photo: courtesy of the artist
Near the mausoleum, towering over the park, there are also other sculptures, this time by contemporary artists. One of them is Melancholy by Maurycy Gomulicki, a geometrical form taken from a famous copperplate by Albrecht Dürer (graphics by the master of the Northern Renaissance can be seen in the Tarnów District Museum). Gomulicki is not a very melancholic artist, rather a declared hedonist who likes to celebrate vitality and sexuality. Reaching for the mysterious symbol of melancholy from Dürer's graphic, the artist tamed it in his own way and made sadness sexy by covering the surface of the polyhedron with a glossy, iridescent varnish. 'I also always quietly hope that people will meet under my works just to kiss', he declared. To kiss under Melancholy at the moment you do not have to go to Tarnów – the sculpture can be temporarily found in front of Królikarnia.
Xawery Dunikowski, monument to Ludwik Solski in front of the L. Solski Theatre, 1905
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Xawery Dunikowski, monument to Ludwik Solski in front of the L. Solski Theatre, 1905, in Tarnów, photo: Bartosz Makowski/Reporter/East News
Among the more inconspicuous monuments and bronze statues of local and national heroes, abundantly found on the streets of every Polish city, it is worth noting the small bust in front of the building of the L. Solski Theatre in Tarnów. The bronze portrait of the institution's patron, the legend of Polish theatre, actor and director Ludwik Solski, found its place thanks to a gift from Solski himself. Solski played and directed in the theatre established just after the war, although his ties with the city are even longer – before studying in Kraków, he graduated from a local secondary school. The history of the monument also goes back further than the history of the theatre itself. The actor's bust is one of Xawery Dunikowski's early works, made in the early 20th century. At the time, Dunikowski was recognised primarily for his portraits. The bust of Solski, with its sharply cut drapery folds and the actor's dynamic, slightly geometrised silhouette, betrays Dunikowski's hand, although the vibrating, impressionistic texture still bears traces of the then widespread fascination with Rodin.
Wilhelm Sasnal, '28.03.1983', 2010, Chemiczna Street, Mościce
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Wilhelm Sasnal, '28.03.1983', Mościce, Tarnów, photo: Kuba Atys/AG
Wilhelm Sasnal's paintings often feature the State Works of Nitrogen Compounds in Mościce, close to where the artist grew up, and even its first director, engineer Tadeusz Zwisłocki, privately the husband of Helena, née Mościcka, the daughter of another chemical engineer, and incidentally the President of the Republic of Poland and the man who initiated the creation of the modern district named after Ignacy Mościcki in the fields near Tarnów. Just as the magnate Tarnowski family gave its name to the city centuries ago, in a similar manner one of the landmarks of the Second Republic has been named after its president. Like the lion's share of the population, the life of the Sasnal family also revolved around the plant – the painter's father and grandfather worked there.
28.03.1983 is not the typical Sasnal project. Although the painter has made shorter and longer films as well as a handful of comic books, sculpture is not one of the media he would willingly flirt with. No wonder that when he did make an exception, it was not for Kraków or a western metropolis, but for his hometown of Mościce. Hidden in the bushes behind the railway station in Mościce, the sculpture is a pyramid of concrete circles covered with black tar. It is a monument to the catastrophe that never came, although everyone was constantly ready for it. The artist, who grew up in the 1980s, encapsulated in a simple form the essence of the Cold War fear, which crystallized intensely in the pre-war industrial district. The Nitrogen Compounds cast a double shadow over Mościce – on the one hand there was the fear of a Chernobyl-like catastrophe, and on the other, the image of American missiles allegedly aimed at the factory as one of its strategic targets.
Paulina Ołowska with students of the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, 'A Festival Inside the Nitrogen Compounds', 2011, State Works of Nitrogen Compounds
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Paulina Ołowska with students of the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, 'A Festival Inside the Nitrogen Compounds', documentation of the mural, 2011, photo: Mateusz Sadowski
The sculpture by Wilhelm Sasnal was created as a prologue to the project 'Tarnów. 1000 years of modernity', implemented by Tarnów BWA, curated by Dawid Radziszewski and Ewa Łączyńska-Widzew. A number of other works were also created in the city on this occasion, including a unique mosaic created by another artist exploring the local faces of modernity. Paulina Ołowska, together with a group of her students from the California College of the Arts, drew not on images of the Nitrogen Compounds, but on the production waste created there. She used them to create a monumental mosaic covering over an area of 40 square metres, hidden from ordinary passers-by and intended for the eyes of the plant's employees, located in the control room of the K-25 unit.
Monika Sosnowska, 'Handle', 2011, house at 10 Obrońców Lwowa Street
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Monika Sosnowska, 'Handle', view of the work at the exhibition 'Tarnów. 1000 Years of Modernity', 2011, photo: Mateusz Sadowski
A completely non-monumental work, also hidden from the public eye, was left in Mościce for the duration of the exhibition by Monika Sosnowska. The sculptress, known for spectacular deconstructions of modernist architecture and the author of works that are hard to miss in spaces such as New York's Central Park, installed a handle on the door of a private house, a pre-war villa on Obrońców Lwowa Street. Cast in aluminium, the object had a frayed form, as if melting and dissolving under the touch of a hand. Sosnowska strikes a tone close to Sasnal's, portraying the fear of catastrophe which seeps into the comforts and safety associated with a home.
Rafał Bujnowski, 'Plaque commemorating Jan Głuszak Dagarama', 2011, facade of the Tarnów District Museum, Rynek
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Rafał Bujnowski, 'Plaque commemorating Jan Głuszak Dagarama', 2011, photo: M. Sadowski
Not all modern utopias have been implemented like Mościce has. One of the most original visionaries of modern architecture – Jan Głuszak, alias Dagarama – was born in Tarnów in 1937. Although he began winning competition prizes at the beginning of his studies, he eventually abandoned his architectural studies, demonstrating his inventiveness beyond the accepted norms at the polytechnic. After dropping out of university, he spent his days designing rural buildings and his evenings dreaming up visions of architecture on... alien planets. After he lost his arm in the early 1960s – when he allegedly put it into a fiery furnace as a result of a vision – he lost the possibility to work in architecture, although he did not stop constructing futurological visions. Although he had exhibitions and several texts published during his lifetime, Dagarama's impressive oeuvre did not gain as much popularity as the related futurological-utopian projects by Yona Friedman or Kenzō Tange. A commemorative plaque for the Tarnów visionary was designed and placed on the building of the District Museum in the centre of Tarnów by Rafał Bujnowski. The simple form visually does not differ from other similar plaques, yet it reveals its uniqueness when touched. Paying homage to Dagarama's feverish imagination, the brass plaque is constantly heated to a temperature of 37 degrees Celsius.
Stach Szumski, 'Tajsa', 2014, a mural on 42 Narutowicza Street
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Stach Szumski, 'Tajsa', 2014, a mural on 42 Narutowicza Street, photo: Jolanta Więcław
The history of Tarnów is marked not only by the history of modernism, but also by the large Roma community. It was also here, in the late 1970s, that the first exhibition in Poland devoted to Roma culture was organised. The Tajsa mural painted by Stach Szumski at 42 Narutowicza Street is also a tribute to Roma culture. The artist completed it on 23 March 2014, on the fiftieth anniversary of Poland’s band on nomadism, which brutally grounded the Roma people – who were constantly on the move. Szumski accumulated in it the attributes of Roma culture and beliefs, painted in a black and gold palette. By reminding the viewer of the repressed culture of the Roma, he also provoked reactions revealing an aversion to them – shortly after the mural was unveiled, a banner was hung on it, saying 'We don't want gypsy murals, only patriotic ones'.
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