In Memoriam: Polish Cultural Figures Who Passed Away in 2019
In the past year, many influential figures who left indelible marks on Polish culture passed away. Below we remember their contributions to their fields, as well as their extraordinary lives.
Bożena Aksamit (15.11.1966 - 1.02.2019)
Bożena Aksamit was a journalist and reporter. ‘In a deck of cards, she was the joker – constantly shifting,’ Piotr Głuchowski described her. Głuchowski and Aksamit won the MediaTory award in the DetonaTOR category for their bravery and determination in reporting on teenage sexual abuse in the Tri-City of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot, published in their book Zatoka Świń (Bay of Pigs).
Aksamit was born in Lower Silesia, but she felt a pull to the coast. After completing a degree in physical oceanography at University of Gdańsk, she worked in computer graphics. This work led her to Gazeta Wyborcza, one of the highest-circulating newspapers in Poland. Her first book was titled Batory: Gwiazdy, Skandale i Miłość na Transatlantyku (Batory: Stars, Scandals and Love Along the Trans-Atlantic). Her last and perhaps most prominent work was an investigation into child molestation accusations against Priest Jankowski, a prominent member of the Solidarity movement. Her editors appreciated her bluntness and positive energy, while her readers – her uncompromising work, commitment and integrity.
Ryszard Bugajski was a film and television director, screenwriter, prose writer and translator. His film Interrogation was one of the most important contributions to the annals of Polish film history. Its anti-establishment message, created under martial law, led to the film being shelved by censors until 1989. Still, illegal copies of the film spread like wildfire, making it one of the most popular ‘non-existent’ films in Poland, and, after the political upheaval of 1989, it went on to win awards at the Gdynia and Cannes film festivals.
‘It turned out I’m a specialist on the Ministry’s secret police and secret service’, the director said years later. His films The Closed Circuit and Blindness also focused on the mechanics of power and psychological entanglements under communist rule.
Andrzej Buszewicz (29.08.1934 - 18.08.2019)
Andrzej Buszewicz was an actor, director and theatre professor who worked for the Helena Modrzejewska National Stary Theatre in Kraków. Earlier, from 1953 to 1955, he performed in the Baj Pomorski Theatre, a puppet theatre in Toruń. He was a familiar face to television viewers, performing in televised theatrical performances and many series. He worked with Andrzej Wajda on the latter’s seven-hour play Z Biegiem Lat, z Biegiem Dni… (With the Passing of Years, Days…), which was turned into a limited-run television series. During his theatrical career, he worked with artists such as Konrad Świnarski, Krystian Lupa, Tadeusz Bradecki and Mikołaj Grabowski.
Bohdan Butenko was one of the most celebrated Polish visual artists, screenwriters and most importantly, illustrators for children’s books: a whole generation of Poles grew up loving his creations. He was also a designer of dolls and sets for puppet theatres and the renowned Kabaret Starszych Panów (Elderly Gentlemen's Cabaret).
In spite of the technological lacks of Poland under communist rule, he designed each children’s book down to the smallest details – from the book cover to the very last period.
Leszek Elektorowicz (29.05.1924 - 18.09.2019)
Leszek Elektorowicz was a poet, prose writer, essayist and translator. He was born Lesław Witeszczak in Lviv. During the war, he fought for the home army and later worked as a feeder of lice (a potentially dangerous position involving serving as a blood source for typhus-carrying lice, which many Lviv intellectuals turned to) at the Institute for Study of Typhus and Virology of Rudolf Weigl. He studied at Jagiellonian University, and when there was a mandatory push toward social realism, he worked at Jagiellonian’s library, as well as the Polish Music Publish House, while refraining from publishing his own works. He was fired from Życie Literackie (Literary Life) after criticism from Władysław Machejka, and Bagatela Theatre let him go after he wrote in support of striking workers in Radom during the June 1976 protests. During the martial law period of the early 1980s, his works were banned.
Elektorowicz was a co-founder of the Stowarzyszenie Pisarzy Polskich (Polish Writer’s Association). While teaching abroad, he introduced American university students to his homeland’s poetry (in places as disparate as Iowa, Berkeley and Texas). He received the Gold Cross of Merit, Gold Medal of Gloria Artis, the Order of Polonia Restituta as well as some nominations and literary awards. His poetry and prose were translated into English, French, Czech, German and Hebrew. His last poetry collection had a prophetic quality to it: Ścieżka do Królestwa (Path to the Kingdom) dealt with death and the hopes of meeting God.
Andrzej Heidrich (6.11.1928 - 20.10.2019)
Thanks to Heidrich, every Pole has contact with a beautifully designed work on a daily basis. Since the 1970s, Andrzej Heidrich has designed Polish currency: first with a series of famous Polish figures, later – portraits of past kings. Every figure is originally hand-drawn, and must balance a combination of aesthetic appeal and safety regulations to prevent forgery. Other than his work with the Polish złoty, he also designed book covers (for a whole decade, he headed design for Czytelnik Publishing House), postage stamps and important personal documentation, such as passports.
Zbigniew Horbowy (28.10.1935 - 17.06.2019)
Poland’s most famous designer of glassware, well-known for his designs during communist rule in Poland, both among people in his home country, as well as international collectors and museum curators. Horbowy created unique glassworks with small bubbles trapped inside – using a technique known as ‘antico’. He worked for many years as a lecturer at the Fine Arts Academy in Wrocław.
Maria Iwaszkiewicz (22.02.1924 - 23.03.2019)
Maria Iwaszkiewicz was a writer, columnist and chronicler of Poland’s food culture. She wrote of her childhood in Stawisko in her book Z Pamięci (From Memory). Before the war, she studied in Brussels, Warsaw and Milanówek. She sat for her final exams in one of Poland’s secret, illegal schools and majored in archaeology in the same manner. She worked as an assistant film editor, an editor for Czytelnik Publishing House, a manager of a coffee shop, and was married three times. She knew everything about the connections between literature and cuisine. She didn’t like books that didn’t include reference to what the main characters ate (‘My father [the poet & writer Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz] always wrote about it!’).
Iwaszkiewicz is also the author of Gawędy o Jedzeniu (Musings about Eating) and Kuchnia Iwaszkiewiczów (The Iwaszkiewicz’s Kitchen), and along with her first husband Stanisław Włodek, she uncovered the secrets of French, Russian, Hungarian and Italian cuisine. Following her father’s wishes, she managed her family’s estate, creating the Anna and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz Museum in Stawisko.
Wiktor Jędrzejec (8.07.1961 - 20.07.2019)
Wiktor Jędrzejec was a graphic designer and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He began his pedagogical career alongside Waldemar Świerzy. For a quarter century, he was under the State Publishing Institute’s employ, working with a legion of other publishing houses and magazines as well.
Ryszard Kaja (16.01.1962 - 7.04.2019)
Ryszard Kaja designed posters, wrote theatre plays and also worked as a painter. Though he was active since the 1980s, true fame came after he designed a series of posters dedicated to Poland. The posters presented Polish cities and regions in Kaja’s typically laconic, simple and often-humorous style – more importantly, they were easy to parse for all viewers.
The series Plakat–Polska (Poster–Poland) has been reproduced thousands of times, even distributed as postage stamps. The posters combined multiple printmaking techniques, proving Kaja’s technical proficiency as well as his simultaneously concise and expressive works.
Jan Kobuszewski (19.04.1934 - 28.09.2019)
Jan Kobuszewski was a talented theatre and film actor with an inimitable comedic flair. He was an unforgettable cabaret artist, performing in the legendary Dudek cabaret as well as in Olga Lipińska’s cabaret. Kobuszewski wrote his way into history first and foremost as a film and theatre actor, working with director Stanisław Bareja on the latter’s cult-status films (Man – Woman Wanted, A Jungle Book of Regulations and Brunet Will Call).
His biography also includes numerous theatrical productions, which he created as a member of different troupes – including the Arnold Szyfman Polish Theatre in Warsaw, the National Theatre in Warsaw, Nowy Theatre in Łódź, and the comedy theatre Kwadrat. He performed in plays written by Zygmunt Hübner, Andrzej Munk, Kazimierz Dejmka and Adam Hanuszkiewicz. He received many accolades for his work, including the Order of Polonia Restituta for his contributions to Polish culture. Famous poet Agnieszka Osiecka deemed him ‘the squandered Chaplin of Polish cinema’.
Janusz Kondratiuk (19.09.1943 - 7.10.2019)
At turns mocking or compassionate, director Janusz Kondratiuk’s specialty was – as described by film historian Tadeusz Lubelski – ‘finding the traces of poetry in the mundanity of life under communism’. His comedies brought to life a shapeless and at times pathetic world, one well-understood by his audience. In films such as Marriageable Girls or Czy Jest Tu Panna na Wydaniu? (Is There a Marriageable Lady Here?), he spoke tenderly of Polish provincial life, laughing at the realities of the communist regime while never turning against its citizens.
Influenced by documentaries and Czech cinema from before 1968, he created his own inimitable style. Even in his later years, he delighted the public with his self-reflexive irony, clearly present in his final work A Cat with a Dog – a tragi-comedy about the illness and death of his brother Andrzej.
Bogdan Konopka (27.07.1953 - 19.05.2019)
Bogdan Konopka was a photographer and art critic who lived in Paris from 1989 onward. His works were clear representations of the ‘elementary photography’ movement in Poland (which focussed on the study of nature) and ‘clean photography’ (a movement centred on technical proficiency, including high exposure, sharp focus and precise exposure). He also experimented with techniques meant to encourage reflection on the medium of photography, and he dressed up his piercing insights on reality with moody black-and-white analogue photographs.
Leopold Kozłowski (26.11.1918 - 12.03.2019)
Leopold Kozłowski was born in Peremyshliany, Ukraine. The pianist and composer was hailed as ‘one of the last klezmorim in Galicia’. Naftule Brandwein, the famed American klezmer musician was his uncle. After the war, Kozłowski directed military bands and became the first programme director of the first Festiwal Piosenki Żołnierskiej (Festival of Army Songs) in Kołobrzeg. In 1968, due to anti-Semitic sentiments in the army, he was moved to the reserves.
In the 1970s, Kozłowski became the music director of the Jewish Theatre in Warsaw and the Romani music group Roma. He composed the music for director Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Austeria and was a music consultant for Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning Schindler’s List, which he also acted in. He worked closely with the Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków.
Władysław Krupka (1926 - 2.09.2019)
Władysław Krupka was a comic book illustrator, singlehandedly bringing to life Captain Żbik. During the communist regime, this Polish equivalent of 007 got its start when Krupka, who was at the time working for the Citizens’ Militia, received the task of promoting the militia to the youth. After retirement, he took to writing detective novels under the pseudonym of Władysław Krupiński. It seems his most famous creation will live on though, as Wojciech Kościelniak (the theatre director who turned The Witcher into a musical) plans to bring Krupka's cult-status comic to the Syrena Theatre in Warsaw.
Lasota was a designer whose works combined practicality with artistry. She created items for everyday use, but their style also qualified them as works of art. Lasota linked personal experiences, nostalgias and reflections on inter-personal relations or femininity. Toward the end of her life, living with cancer, she took part in a movement bringing revolutionary medical treatments to Poland.
Zbigniew Makowski (31.01.1930 - 19.08.2019)
Zbigniew Makowski was a painter, illustrator and poet. He took part in many of the most important exhibitions of post-war art, such as the first artist gathering in Osieki, though his lyrical and erudite paintings, closer to the spirit of surrealism, barred him from total inclusion in Poland's avant-garde movement.
Stanisław Niemczyk (19.09.1943 - 3.05.2019)
Stanisław Niemczyk was an architect with an individualist streak and a spiritual approach to designing. Although he began his career in Tychy working for Miastoprojekt, he went down in history thanks to his spectacular church design.
Niemczyk mastered the art of combining the style of the past with modern forms, and he decorated the walls with symbolically rich details. In a country where modern sacral architecture is looked down on, he built churches that delighted all.
Warren Niesłuchowski (11.10.1946 - 17.06.2019)
Niesłuchowski was an independent curator, translator, linguist and patron of the arts on every continent. Born in Germany in 1946, he and his family moved constantly out of necessity, though in his adult life he chose a nomadic existence – he passed away in New York.
Ryszard Peryt (9.03.1947 - 23.01.2019)
Ryszard Peryt was an actor, theatre and opera director, instructor and opera theoretician. He was the only person in the world to stage performances of all of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s works. Under the communist regime, he was a member of the democratic resistance. He took part in demonstrations against the communist regime’s decision to remove director Kazimierz Dejmek’s Forefather’s Eve from the National Theatre line-up – the removal of the show sparked large protests in 1968.
At the beginning of his creative career, he was inspired by Jerzy Grotowski, whom he later went on to work with, though he never joined Grotowski’s troupe. Peryt directed Mozart’s works in Poland, Austria, Germany, Spain, Holland, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, France, Sweden, Denmark, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. He was buried in the Pantheon of Great Poles in the Temple of Divine Providence.
Andrzej Polkowski (5.09.1939 - 5.09.2019)
Andrzej Polkowski was a writer and archaeologist. He was also considered a wizard among translators. He had a wonderful sense for delicate words and those with multiple meanings. As a child, he listened to his mother’s recitation of poet Julian Tuwim’s Locomotive and taught himself the sounds that correspond to each letter. His step-father, an Anglicist, translated C.S. Lewis’ books for him on the spot – a few decades later, Polkowski went on to translate The Chronicles of Narnia into Polish.
Before becoming a professional translator (of over 100 works), he published theological and philosophical works, translated church documents (including Pope John Paul II’s homilies) and biographies of his hero, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He rose to fame with his translations of the Harry Potter series, in which he kept the humour and cleverness of the original’s naming conventions. In the monthly magazine Znak, he wrote:
Translating is also a form of creating, the same as how any piece of writing is a method of translating from a language made up of loosely gathered thoughts, feelings and visions.
Jan Purzycki (20.06.1948 - 20.08.2019)
Jan Purzycki was a screenwriter for film and television, though his path to cinema was long, winding and unique. He worked in a design office, horse stable, spent some time as an electrician, lecturer, civil servant, head of television station TVP and political advisor. He entered film history for his excellent pop culture contributions: he wrote Big Shar, which was seen by over 2 million cinema goers, and the sensational Soccer Poker, made with Janusz Zaorski, became a cult hit for its generation.
Natalia Rolleczek (16.02.1919 - 8.07.2019)
Rolleczek was a young adult and children’s book writer as well as a playwright. She claimed she would never write in a diary, because she ‘didn’t peddle intimacy’. She was a part of the Home Army in WWII and was friends with a young Karol Wojtyła before his ascension to popehood. She became famous after her autobiographical tale Drewniany Różaniec (Wooden Rosary) – a year after its publication, it was added as a canonical school text. The story follows a stay in an orphanage run by Felician Sisters: poverty, heavy physical labour and demure obedience abounded. In 1946, directors Ewa and Czesław Petelski brought the story to the big screen – Rolleczek played herself in the movie.
Later, she wrote books for her sons, but her true love remained ancient history. Readers of the popular children and teen magazine Płomyk voted her book Kochana Rodzinka i Ja (Beloved Family and I) as the most popular book for children. Her librarian friends also made sure her novel Selene, Córka Kleopatry (Selene, Cleopatra’s Daughter) flew off the shelves.
Marek Sapetto (6.11.1939 - 6.06.2019)
Sapetto was a painter and graphic designer, working for many years as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He had his artistic debut in the 1960s as a member of the Grupa Realistów (Realists’ Group) and he was faithful to his style of engaged, critical commentaries in his realist paintings throughout his career, occasionally including pop art sensibilities.
Bogusław Schaeffer was a composer, musicologist, playwright, graphic designer and pedagogue. He stood out for his disparate creative influences, avant-garde stylings and controversial aesthetic decisions. As a composer, he made his mark with innovative works and bold experimentation with new forms, genres and types of music. As one of the first Polish electronic music composers, he began work with Warsaw's Polish Radio Experimental Studio in 1965. There he created his composition Symfonia: Muzyka Elektroniczna (Symphony: Electronic Music) which to this day is still being reinterpreted by artists.
He wrote about 550 compositions in 23 different genres, many of which have never been performed. He also wrote 40 plays (some of which he directed himself), which have been translated into 17 languages.
Izabela Skrybant-Dziewiątkowska (28.05.1938 - 1.05.2019)
Skrybant-Dziewiątkowska was a vocalist in one of Poland’s longest-running bands (alongside The Troubadours) – Tercet Egzotyczny (Exotic Trio). She founded the band in 1963 along with her husband, Zbigniew Dziewiątkowski. She performed with him for 53 years, previously working as a soloist at the Wrocław Operetta, as well as playing a supporting role in Wojciech Jerzy Has’s The Saragossa Manuscript.
The trio became a Polish cultural phenomenon: critics dismissed their Latin-style music as kitschy, but that didn’t stop them from gaining huge commercial success. The trio also maintained popularity anywhere in the world that had a concentration of Poles – as long as enough people’s names ended in ‘–ski’. They played 49 concerts in the United States alone. In fact, it appears to be the only Polish band with a museum dedicated to its existence (the Exotic Trio museum was founded in 2014 in Lubin, near Kościan).
Adam Słodowy (3.12.1923 - 10.12.2019)
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Adam Słodowy on the set of his TV show 'Zrób To Sam' (Do It Yourself), 1979, photo: Jan Morek / PAP
A hugely popular face to many children over the years, Adam Słodowy was a star of Polish TV and author of popular books on tinkering. He created Zrób to Sam (Do It Yourself), an iconic show for children, broadcast in Poland during the communist-regime era. From the very first broadcast – in which Słodowy told viewers how to build a birdhouse – he garnered enormous popularity that continued throughout the show’s 505 episodes. Słodowy taught his young viewers how to be creative and self-reliant, and how to use materials in unusual ways – extremely useful when shelves in shops where empty due to the communist regime’s policies and products such as toys were generally difficult to come by.
Between 1973 and 1975, Słodowy also co-wrote scripts for Pomysłowy Dobromir (The Inventive Do-Gooder), a TV cartoon about a little boy who lives with his grandfather and a friendly bird remembered fondly as one of the nation's favourites. Around a decade later, Słodowy conceived another series called Pomysłowy Wnuczek (The Inventive Grandson) based on the same concept. Apart from his work in TV, Słodowy published several best-selling books which compiled the ideas he presented on TV as well as how to make other toys and devices. In 1983, he was awarded a prize for being Poland's most borrowed author from Polish public libraries.
Szaybo worked as a graphic designer (of posters, album covers and books), illustrator, photographer, curator, as well as editorial cartoonist. He designed some of the most famous album covers from the Polish Jazz series, such as Astigmatic: The Music of Komeda.
He also designed albums for The Clash, Elton John and Judas Priest. Szaybo also collaborated with different institutions for many years including numerous theatres, Polish Records ‘Muza’, the Artystyczno-Graficzne Publishing House, the National Publishing Agency, the Polish Jazz Association, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Culture.pl's parent organisation), the Fryderyk Chopin Institute as well as the Czytelnik Publishing House Co-Op, where he worked as the artistic director from 1994 to 1996.
Romuald Szejd (07.04.1938 - 03.09.2019)
Szejd was an actor and director, the founder and longtime director of Poland’s first theatre without an in-house acting troupe, the Scena Prezentacje Theatre in Warsaw. He led the theatre for 37 years, during which time he directed over 100 plays.
As an actor, he also worked with Krzysztof Zanussi and Robert Gliński. He received multiple accolades, including the Order of Polonia Restituta and the silver Gloria Artis Medal. ‘He represented the things that are now disappearing: class, intelligence, great culture and good manners’, said actress Magdalena Zawadzka in an interview with Polish Radio.
Mieczysław Tomaszewski (17.11.1921 - 14.01.2019)
Tomaszewski was a musicologist and music theorist, a professor at the Academy of Music in Kraków as well as a director and editor-in-chief for the Polish Music Publishing House. He initiated many of the publishing house’s largest editorial undertakings, including the series Muzyka Viva and Biblioteka Małych Pazur (Library of Little Claws). He was the author of numerous articles dedicated to music theory and history in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially romantic compositions, Polish music and Chopin’s works, though in an interview with our publication he made clear that Chopin still held many mysteries for him.
After World War II, he worked in Bydgoszcz, a city renowned for its music. In 1948, he was in charge of organising Rok Chopinowski (Chopin’s Year), a celebration of Chopin’s legacy, in Pomerania and Kujawy. Under his leadership, 250 symphonies and intimate concerts were performed in Pomerania. Lectures by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Zygmunt Mycielski and himself accompanied the concerts.
Rafał Urbacki (9.12.1984 - 22.05.2019)
Rafał Urbacki was a choreographer, performer and alternative dancer. As someone living with myopathy (a muscle disease), he used a wheelchair for 11 years, and later – drawing from his knowledge of contemporary dance – created a unique method of movement. He studied theatre (history and directing) and cultural studies. The wide net of his studies matched his own creative output: he created interdisciplinary projects, performance-driven lectures, events on the cutting edge of performance and debates of selfhood. He worked with local communities, studying the ideas of otherness and exclusion.
He created the inter-disciplinary dance performance Jaram Się (Psyched Up) about the situation of steelworkers, the social cabaret Bloki i Familoki (Blocks and Familoks) about the social transformation of Katowice and the performance Gatunki Chronione (Protected Species), in collaboration with people with mobility issues. One of Urbacki’s most important works was his performance lecture Mt 9,7 [On Wstał i Poszedł do Domu] (Matthew 9:7 [And the Man Got Up and Went Home]), where he came out as homosexual. During his theatrical work, he collaborated with Monika Strzępka, Katarzyna Kalwat and Radek Rychcik, among others.
Wanda Warska (28.04.1932 - 6.07.2019)
Warska was a legend in the world of Polish song and jazz. She had close ties to the Piwnica pod Baranami (Cellar Under the Rams) as well as the Piwnica Artystyczna w Warszawie (Artists’ Cellar in Warsaw), which she co-founded with her husband Andrzej Kurylewicz. Her most famous songs include: Oczy Masz Niebiesko-Zielone (You Have Blue-Green Eyes), W Weronie (In Verona) and Szukaj Mnie (Look for Me).
Her haunting ad-libbed vocalisations on the soundtrack for Pociąg (Train) made her voice unforgettable. She can also be heard in Andrzej Wajda’s Everything for Sale. She performed the majority of the songs written by her husband. She also performed abroad, playing in Austria, East Germany, West Germany, France, Yugoslavia, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Cuba and Venezuela. She was also a painter and had over 20 solo exhibitions.
Piotr Woźniak-Starak (10.07.1980 - 18.08.2019)
Woźniak-Starak was a film producer who helped build a new standard in Polish popular films. He was a professional who believed that it was possible to combine artistic excellence with commercial potential. He was behind the success of Łukasz Palkowski’s Gods, as well as Maria Sadowska’s The Art of Loving.
In the world of Polish cinema, which tends to disdain public opinion, he stood his own course and treated the public with respect, ensuring quality on every level in the films he produced. The Coldest Game, a cold war spy drama and Woźniak-Starak’s last production, is proof of what a great loss cinema has suffered due to the young producer’s untimely death.
Jerzy Wójcik (12.09.1930 - 4.04.2019)
Jerzy Wójcik was a brilliant cinematographer and film director. He is responsible for filming some of the most iconic scenes in Polish cinema: Maciek Chełmicki’s death in Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds, the Wołmontowicze fire in Hoffman’s The Deluge, the attempt on the pharaoh’s life in Kawalerowicz’s Pharaoh, and in Mother Joan of the Angels, he proved how much colour can infuse a film’s symbolism.
He was a cinematic philosopher, seeking greater meaning in the art. His own thoughts on the matter he published in his book, The Labyrinth of Light. As a professor, he guided students through this labyrinth for decades, becoming a guidepost for more than one generation of cinematographers.
Originally compiled in Polish, translated & updated by AZ, Dec 2019
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