Edward Krasiński’s famous endeavours in spatial installations that bring together sculpture and photography will be displayed alongside some of his lesser-known works from the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to Krasiński’s displays, the film Edward Krasiński’s Studio (2012) by French-American filmmaker Babette Mangolte which explores the artist’s famous Warsaw studio where he worked and met with world-class artists will be screened.
Leontine Coelewij, the curator of contemporary art at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, says:
Krasiński is comparatively unrecognised because we previously knew very little about what went on in the communist countries behind the Iron Curtain. At the time, we were hardly aware that modern art was also being made in Poland. This exhibition underscores the significance of his career, which spanned four decades.
Born in 1925 in what is now Ukraine, Krasiński began his long artistic career at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków during the 1940s. He moved to Warsaw in 1954 and, with a group of other avant-garde artists, founded the famous Foksal Gallery, Warsaw’s central hub for contemporary art, in the 1960s.
In 1968, he introduced blue Scotch tape into his work. He used this simple, ready-to-use material to connect spaces and objects – it would become his trademark. The tape still lines parts of the Foksal Gallery today.
The Amsterdam exhibition runs from 23rd June to 15th October 2017.
Source: press materials; compiled by MH, 23 May 2017