Marek Piasecki, "T1", photography, 1962, source: press materials
Following the success of the exhibition organised by the Asymetria Gallery at the Baudoin Lebon Gallery in Paris last fall, the time has come for the opening of the show at home in Warsaw. The scope of the original exhibiton has been broadened to include recently discovered works by several major artists from the immediate post-war period
Surrealism as such never came into being in Poland, at least not as a strictly defined artistic movement, neither before the Second World War nor after 1945. Nevertheless, works created during this period were inspired by the Surrealist movement. The exhibition hosted by the Asymetria Gallery shows the works displaying a Surrealist spirit by Zdzisław Beksiński, Zbigniew Dłubak, Jerzy Lewczyński, Marek Piasecki, Bronisław Schlabs, Krzysztof Vorbrodt and Zofia Rydet in a new context. Some of the works are on show for the first time. They make a specific counterpoint to the Closed Show exhibition (1959) in Gliwice, a milestone in the history of Polish photography which followed the post-war Surrealist conventions prevailing in the world art at that time.
Encompassing the timeframe between the late 1940s and the 1970s of the 20th century, the presented works are set within various political and artistic contexts. The exhibition is divided into chapters entitled after key Surrealist ideas, such as: discovery, journey, internal model, eroticism, automatic writing, and black humour. The juxtaposition of works by different artists within one chapter provides a unique opportunity to see each artist in a new light. The exposition offers an innovative interpretation of Polish photography of the second half of the 20th Century against the broad backdrop of world photography.
At the end of 1950s, on the occasion of the Post-Surrealist exhibition of the international Phases group held by the Krzysztofory Gallery (1959) in Kraków, the writers and artists representing the Surrealist movement delivered their message to Polish intellectuals which was recorded on a magnetic tape and read by André Breton himself. The text started as follows:
You have already achieved, and you are able to achieve again, what has always seemed unthinkable and hopeless in our bourgeois democracies; in 1956 the authorities hesitated and stepped back in the face of the spirit, your spirit. You defied the reality of authorities with the reality of spirit; we hereby defy it only within the framework of its words.
Paradoxically, this message delivered by the co-author of The Magnetic Fields is the most concrete encounter between Surrealism and Polish art. With the words of the Surrealist founder resonating in the background, the curators of the exhibition display works of Polish artists which have marked an artistic revolution in field of the word and spirit - much like Surrealism had in other parts of Europe.
For more information on the fall 2010 exhibition in Paris (October 28 - December 4, 2010), see: Photography in Communist Poland - A Surrealist Spirit?
Exhibition opening: January 18, 2011, 19:00. The exhibition runs between January 19 - March 4, 2011
Asymetria Gallery
18a apt. 8a Nowogrodzka Street
Warsaw
link*www.asymetria.eu*http://www.asymetria.eu/pl/html/index.php?****Source: press release