Architectural Portraits: Hanna and Gabriel Rechowicz
The stylized interiors of some of the duo's most memorable projects - whether it's the elegant Bristol Hotel bar or a local supermarket - make a statement about the status of Polish design from the '50s and '60s.
Hanna and Gabriel Rechowicz's wall paintings at the Bristol Hotel cocktail bar in Warsaw, the turn of the 50's and 60's, press materials
The stylized interiors of some of the duo's most memorable projects - whether it's the elegant Bristol Hotel bar or a local supermarket - make a statement about the status of Polish design from the '50s and '60s
The Bristol Hotel cocktail bar in Warsaw, murals and mosaics at Dom Chłopa and the Supersam supermarket - these are a sampling of monumental interior design projects created by Hanna and Gabriel Rechowicz.
Gabriel "Gaber" Rechowicz studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the State Graduate School of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, and architecture at the Gdańsk University of Technology. He was a winner of the first prize in a nationwide competition for illustrations for the works of Adam Mickiewicz (1954), and Gold Medal for illustrations at the XII Triennale di Milano. His works were shown in solo exhibitions across Europe and even in Tokyo. His wife Hanna Rechowicz studied painting and interior design at the State Graduate School of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. She was a painter, sculptor, interior decorator, theatre scenographer and artistic textile designer. Together they created a number of projects that made a significant impact on interior design in Poland in the middle of the 20th century.
From the 1950s, Hanna and Gabriel Rechowicz worked with some of Poland's most outstanding architects in supplementing major developments with intriguing interior design schemes. The couple gained recognition in that period for their painted wall decorations in the cocktail bar of Bristol Hotel in Warsaw, their murals and mosaics at Dom Chłopa, and monumental decorations of the interior of the Supersam supermarket. The artists' portfolio presents projects realised between 1957-92 in towns and cities across Poland.
In their architectural paintings, the Rechowicz duo employed various mosaic and painting techniques, often combining them in a individual piece. The compositions received a unique quality through the choice of material, for example, carefully selected river pebbles, tiles or ceramic waste, which mixed with mortar, created an abstract relief - as well as through the motifs borrowed from the canvas painting and commercial graphic design of Gabriel Rechowicz.
In the spring of 2011 an exhibition at the Kordegarda Projekt gallery in Warsaw presented the couple's artistic achievement through the decades through the remnants of their work. It was a particularly challenging task as many of these projects were temporary installations. The selection of nearly fifty pieces by the two artists rare sketches are strikingly fresh in their approach to colour and artistic vision. Particularly noteworthy are the unique designs of visual decorations for People's Republic of Poland propaganda industrial exhibitions in Moscow (1959), Beijing (1960) and Madrid (1970), today the only preserved material trace of those impermanent artistic projects.
The exhibition also figured as a tribute to the work of Gabriel Rechowicz, who passed away at the end of 2010.
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Kordegarda Gallery, Warsaw
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