1944
At the Sukiennice in Kraków, Andrzej sees an exhibition of Japanese art from the collection of Feliks ‘Manggha’ Jasieński, which fascinates him so deeply that, many years later, he names the museum he founded after Manggha.
1946
In Radom, Wajda sits his lower secondary school-leaving exams and, shortly afterwards, designs his first-ever stage set – for Sophocles’ Antigone and for the scout’s Gawęda o Radosnej Pracy (A Tale of Joyful Work), directed by Stanisław Gronkowski.
During the summer holidays, he applies to the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts. While visiting Kraków to see his former teacher, Wiktor Langer, he is arrested by the Security Service and ransomed by his uncle, Augustyn.
In October, he begins his studies as an auditor in the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. He studies in the studio of Professor Zygmunt Radnicki.
In the same year, he joins the Independent Socialist Youth Union. Two years later, after its dissolution, he will join the Polish Youth Union.
1947
After passing the examination before the State Examination Board, he becomes a full-fledged student at the Academy of Fine Arts.
1948
He is an active student and works as an artist. He is involved in organising the Recovered Territories Exhibition and carries out commissions for the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków.
He joins the Self-Study Group, founded by Andrzej Wróblewski, a prominent painter of the younger generation.
1949
In Andrzej Wróblewski’s studio, he sees for the first time the artist’s series of paintings Rozstrzelania (Executions), which depict the victims of war and are ‘the voice of those who have died’. He is convinced that he will never be as good a painter as Wróblewski and that the creator of Rozstrzelania has expressed everything Wajda would have liked to convey in his own paintings.
He decides to leave the Academy of Fine Arts in favour of the Łódź Film School. He is admitted straight away to the second year.