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Podsumowanie
Between 19th February and 20th June 2016, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews will host an exhibition by Frank Stella, one of the most prominent contemporary American artists. The exhibition will present his Polish Villages relief series along with pre-war photographs and drawings of the wooden synagogues which inspired them.
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The American artist, whose work has been exhibited in museums and art galleries worldwide, first got fascinated by historic Jewish synagogues in 1970s when he came across the book on wooden synagogues by Polish architects Kazimierz and Maria Piechotka. The fascination sparked his Polish Villages series – a cycle of wooden reliefs, each named after a town where a wooden synagogue had once stood.
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The exhibition, prepared in close co-operation with the artist, not only showcases his selected works, but also explores his creative process. It follows Stella's sources of inspiration, starting with pre-war photographs and architectural drawings of synagogues – the result of an inventory conducted by the Department of Polish Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology, with which the Piechotkas closely co-operated. Many of the photographs were taken by Szymon Zajczyk, a Jewish cataloguer and art historian who later perished in the Warsaw ghetto. The exhibition then presents subsequent stages of Stella's work – from preparatory and dimensional drawings, through wooden monochromatic relief models, to painted cardboard models and the final works of art: large-format painted reliefs.
The new exhibition at POLIN Museum goes beyond a standard solo exhibition by an individual artist – through its interesting juxtaposition of artistic work, historic research and archival documents, it enables museum visitors to learn about the vitality of Polish Jewish culture which continues to inspire despite the material destruction of the Jewish world.
Frank Stella and Synagogues of Historic Poland
(co-organised by the Warsaw University of Technology and the Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences)
Exhibition is open from 19th February to 20th June 2016.
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw
6 Mordechaja Anielewicza St.
00-157 Warsaw, Poland
Sources: Polin.pl, Culture.pl, compiled by OK, 16 Feb 2016