Neo-Avant-Garde Warsaw: Mapping Independent Galleries of the 1970s & 1980s

leszek_przyjemski_trzy_dni_opowiesci_z_monako_pracownia_dziekanka_afisze_na_bramie_fot_tsikorski_2.jpg, default, Leszek Przyjemski 'Trzy dni opowieści z Monako' (Three Days of Stories from Monaco), Dziekanka Studio, posters on the gate, 1981, photo: Tomasz Sikors

#photography & visual arts

#visual arts

Independent, non-official, authorial, student-led, alternative, anti-institutional art galleries constituted a prominent element of the urban landscape of the 1970s and 1980s.

Although they started appearing earlier than that, it was the decade of Gierek that brought about their flourishing – which is not to say that it had anything to do with the politics of the First Secretary. Paradoxically, their avant-garde position was reinforced after martial law due to the (mostly temporary) closing of numerous public institutions and a boycott of the remaining official exhibit spaces. The political polarisation helped create a non-conformist aura around niche galleries.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Familja Radio Warszawa (Libero Petrič, Jerzy Caryk, Kuba Pajewski and others), concert/environment, Dziekanka Studio, 1985, photo: Tomasz Sikorski

Picture image

familja_radio_warszawa_koncert-environment-fot_tsikorski.jpg

The independent gallery movement

The name itself was a bit of a problem. The term ‘independent galleries’ had already been in use under the communist regime – but what was it actually supposed to mean? What were Sigma, Remont, Piwna or Repassage supposed to be independent from? Hence the proliferation of adjectives such as the ones mentioned at the beginning and others, referring more to the artistic character of the galleries. That’s why some of them were described as (post)conceptual, (neo-)avant-garde or progressive. Bożena Stokłosa distinguishes between mail galleries, photo-media galleries and group galleries. She thereby highlighted that the exhibited new art frequently departed from the traditional media of painting and sculpture, instead turning towards mail art, photography, film, video art or collective activities. In reality, however, only a few spaces were of a media-related or ideological character, while many remained experimental spaces or evolved alongside their creators’ approaches.

Anti-institutionalism

Galleries such as Dziekanka (Dean’s Leave), Repassage, and to certain extent Remont, not to mention the less frivolous Foksal or Współczesna (Contemporary) became subjects of detailed analyses, monographic articles, even books and albums. Their programmes, directors and prominent artists are well known and so are the groundbreaking events and emerging tendencies associated with them. What’s equally interesting is their place on the map of socialist Warsaw and the reconstruction of the neo-avant-garde topography of the capital from the period of Gierek and Jaruzelski. After all, spatial relationships, distances and neighbourhoods between those places had a significant impact on the art they showcased. Could happenings performed on Krakowskie Przedmieście by artists associated with Dziekanka and Repassage also be performed in, let’s say, Wola or Ursynów? Would the bohemian, punk young artists from Remont smoke weed in the same carefree and nonchalant way if their club was located in the busy centre of the city rather than between the southern edge of the Old Town and the Mokotów Field?

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Remont Gallery, Warsaw 1985, photo: Remont Gallery's press materials

Picture image

galeria-rp-arszawa-85.jpg

The beginning dates back to the establishment of the Contemporary Art Gallery, launched by Janusz and Maria Bogucki at the back of the National Theatre in 1965. A year later, Foksal PSP was established by a circle of avant-garde artists and curators: Wiesław Borowski, Zbigniew Gostomski, Tadeusz Kantor, Edward Krasiński, Roman Owidzki, Anka Ptaszkowska, Henryk Stażewski and Mariusz Tchorek. While these two first galleries contributed to the later artistic turmoil by achieving relative independence from the cultural politics of the state, subsequent galleries departed from the conservative trend of insulating art from all external influence. Quite the contrary, they intervened in the social reality more and more boldly, and their alternative atmosphere of freedom and fun was far removed from the bombast which caused Kantor to be mocked.

Galleries in quotation marks

The first point on our counter-cultural, neo-avant-garde map of Warsaw was Sigma – the University of Warsaw Student Cultural Centre established in 1971 with headquarters by the Small Courtyard. That’s where the provocative, burlesque artist Paweł Freisler began his work, that’s also where Grupa w Składzie (Group Composed of) – founded around the same time, combining intuitive music with oriental elements and sound collage – would perform. A year later, Freisler founded the nearby 'Galeria' ('Gallery') – the quotation marks constituting an integral element of the institution’s name. Operating on Krakowskie Przemieście 24 and 26, Sigma and 'Galeria' attracted similar milieus, even though the former made its space available to music and theatre groups, whereas the latter was oriented solely towards narrowly understood artistic activity.

Significantly, Freisler’s gesture – the tautological name put in quotation marks – was directed at Foksal. While Borowski, Kantor, Ptaszkowska or Andrzej Turowski, the co-author of Foksal’s programme, wished to separate art from all external influence, cleanse it from everything societal, focusing on its language and meticulous documentation, Freisler clearly distanced himself from such a model of the gallery, emphasising that the institutional dimension is only provisional when compared to social life and creative coexistence of people. In the words of Łukasz Ronduda 'Freisler’s "Gallery" on Krakowskie Przedmieście, curated from March 1972, was a permanent institutional and conceptual experiment'.

One of the strategies of critiquing art institutions was Freisler’s Museum Zero – a project consisting in replacing material artistic object with their conceptualisations, in other words in replacing the copies with platonic ideas. At the beginning of 1973 the specialising in the art of intrigue artist gave the space over to Elżbieta and Emil Cieślar, who established the Repassage gallery and managed it until 1978 under the protective umbrella of the Academy of Fine Arts, simultaneously remaining within the University of Warsaw from the legal point of view.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Elżbieta and Emil Cieślar, 'Kalejdoskop czyli popatrz przez rurę' (Kaleidoscope or look through the pipe), 1972, Cleaning Art, Repassage Gallery's windows, Krak Przedm, Warsaw, from the Repassage Gallery archive, photo: Tomasz Sikorski

Picture image

elzbieta_i_emil_cieslarowie_czyszczenie_sztuki_okna_galerii_repassage_krak_przedm_warszawa_z_archiwum_galerii_repassage_fot_tsikorski1.jpg

After the Cieślars moved to France in 1978, the gallery was taken over by Krzysztof Jung, who renamed it Repassage 2; afterwards, in the early 1980s, the place was directed by Roman Woźniak who, in turn, changed the name to Re’Repassage. However, according to Ronduda, Freisler’s co-artists Przemysław Kwiek and Zofia Kulik – also known as the artistic duo KwieKulik – were so dissatisfied with his decision that, when the spot was passed on to the Cieślars in 1974, they established their own Workshop for Action, Documentation, and Popularisation in their apartment in Praga. Earlier, in 1971, the active since the 1950s artist, musician, composer, poet and theorist Andrzej Partum created Poetry Office – a one-man artistic institution based in his modest apartment in the attic of a townhouse on Poznańska 38. The Office quickly became one of Poland’s most important hubs of the global mail art network.

After the failure of the ‘Think – Communism’ project – performed on 16th December 1971, referring to the poetics of socialist realism to rethink the communist project of rebuilding society, Zygmunt Piotrowski, the main creator of the performance, was discouraged from political action and established the Art-Research Studio for Warsaw Art Students, also known as Studio A-B. The state’s disapproval towards the artistic project of ‘new socialist realism’ (whose contributors also included Kwiek and Kulik) pushed Piotrowski in the direction of self-development work, the space for which was provided by the club at the Dziekanka students’ hall – located on Krakowskie Przedmieście, closed since 1968 as a result of the events of March ’68.

Piotrowski (in collaboration with Ryszard Kryska) ran Dziekanka up until 1975, resigning once the Socialist Polish Students’ Union withdrew their support for students’ artistic initiatives. Then, Dziekanka was passed on to the Academy of Movement and Wojciech Krukowski, who turned the place into the headquarter of the Students’ Artistic Circles Centre. One year later, Dziekanka Workshop was taken over by Janusz Bałdyga, Jerzy Onuch and Łukasz Szajna. When the Academy of Movement withdrew from the space in 1979, Jerzy Onuch and Tomasz Sikorski took the wheel and ran the Workshop for the next 9 years.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

ZOO Group (Ihor Ciszkewycz, Nicole Grospierre, Danilel Wnuk and musicians), concert, Dziekanka Studio, 1981, photo: Tomasz Sikorski

Picture image

grupa_zoo_ihor_ciszkewycz_nicole_grospierre_danilel_wnuk_i_muzycy_koncert_pracownia_dziekanka_fot_tsikorski_1.jpg

In 1972, Henryk Gajewski – then a student at the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering – established the Remont gallery by the Riviera students’ hall. Up until 1977, Gajewski ran the gallery together with Andrzej Jórczak and Krzysztof Wojciechowski; in 1978, the gallery was replaced by an experimental educational-artistic centre Post Remont, whose end was linked to Gajewski’s emigration to Amsterdam in 1982.

Thumbnail — The performance 'Ptaki' (Birds) by Włodzimierz Borowski, Andrzej Mitan, Cezary Staniszewski and Tomasz Wilmański, RR Gallery, Warsaw 1985, photo: RR Gallery/vimeo.com

Between 1977 and 1981, the aforementioned Andrzej Jórczak ran Little Gallery ZPAF (Polish Photographer’s Association), where Jacek Malicki, a musician known from Grupa w Składzie, and Krzysztof Wojciechowski were both active as well. The links between Little Gallery and Remont were not only personal but also ideological and aesthetic. Slightly earlier, at the end of year 1975, Freisler made an offer to Tomasz Sikorski – they were to run the gallery of the Mospan student club in the Babilon students’ hall in Kopińska Street; Sikorski began to create the place on his own, then he joined forces with Tomasz Konart, who was a student of the Łódź Film School at that time. After Mospan was closed in December 1978, Sikorski and Konart continued their gallery activity without a fixed location, focusing on mail art under the name Gallery P.O. Box 17 – until November 1979.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Paweł Freisler, 'Terytorium IM' (IM Territory), Mospan Gallery, Warsaw, 1976, photo: Tomasz Sikorski

Picture image

pawel_freisler_terytorium_im_galeria_mospan_warszawa_fot_tsikorski.jpg

Finally, in 1980, in their apartment in Piwna Street, Andrzej and Emilia Dłużniewski established the private gallery Piwna. One must add to the list Hybrydy and Stodoła (Barn) student clubs, where artistic life flourished as well; Jajo Pełne Muzyki (Egg Full of Music), a music club located in the Old Town House of Culture by the Old Town Square; private workshops – such as the one in Mokotów, belonging to Daniel and Dorota Wnuk; classes at the Academy of Fine Arts, especially the ones conducted by Professors Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz and Oskar Hansen; finally, in the late 1980s, the spontaneously created graffiti street galleries. The underground passages between the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Warsaw, as well as the ones under the Na Rozdrożu square could serve as examples of spaces for grassroots street art.

Krakowskie Przedmieście & everything adjacent

The short review of places and dates proves that the flourishing of independent, alternative artistic life – whether in the existential-communal form preferred in Cieślars’ Repassage or in the more ludic, perverse formula of the new art shaped by Gajewski and the punk circles in Post Remont – departed from the conventions of typical avant-garde galleries such as Warsaw’s Foksal, both with regard to the emotional climate and to their everyday way of functioning. It’s no coincidence that in the mid-1970s, Wiesław Borowski attacked the young generation of artists – then largely represented by Repassage – in his loud article with a suggestive title ‘Pseudo-Avant-Garde’. The true avant-garde, of course, had its place in Foksal Street. And yet, despite the heated ideological, aesthetic, and generational conflict, both sides were quite close to each other as far as topography was concerned.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Ossjan concert (pictured in the centre: Milo Kurtis and Jacek Ostaszewski), Dziekanka Studio, 1980, photo: Tomasz Sikorski

Picture image

ossjan_koncert_w_centrum_milo_kurtis_i_jacek_ostaszewski_pracownia_dziekanka_fot_tsikorski.jpg

It’s understandable, in a way, that Sigma and Repassage functioned near the University of Warsaw, Dziekanka – in a nearby students’ hall; it’s no wonder that student and young artists’ life was centred around universities (University of Warsaw, Academy of Fine Arts, Chopin University of Music). Close to them, on Castle Square, was also the Little Gallery, the aforementioned clubs and other attractions. Foksal and Współczesna (Contemporary) were situated near the Royal Route. What used to be the representative axis of the city, somewhat abandoned in the post-war period – power was located in the monumental spaces of Marszałkowska Street with MDM and the Palace of Culture and Science – still symbolised prestige. Artists and intellectuals stuck to their narrow streets and townhouses.

Remont and Mospan, similarly to PDDiU Kulik and Kwieka (Partuma Poetry Office was still more of a mail drop address than a gallery), constituted exceptions, either due to the lack of options other than artistic activity in one’s own home or as a way of using what happened to be there – a gallery in a basement of a students’ hall in Kopińska Street may not have been a dream come true, but it was a real, physical space to make use of.

In his essay from the album Dziekanka Artystyczna (Artistic Dean’s Leave), Jacek Dobrowolski points to the overlap between the location of the spots for contemporary art and the places where intellectuals would consume vodka:

The trail of alcoholic liberation led from café Czytelnik (Reader) on Wiejska Street and SPATiF in Aleje Ujazdowskie through Piotruś bar in Nowy Świat and the iconic Kameralna and SARP Club in Foksal Street, and further through the popular among students cafés Nowy Świat (New World) and Harenda, Staropolska restaurant, Diana public bath, Bristol, the bar in the European Hotel and Kamieniołomy, Ściek film club, Telimena café, the now non-existent Pod Kominkiem (Under the Fireplace) bar, Hopfer’s winery near Dziekanka, to Poziomka on the corner of Miodowa Street, where drug dealers and addicts started to appear in the mid-1970s. The most perseverant would dive into the Old Town, visiting either Pod Gołębiami (Under Pigeons), a place frequented by the communist government’s security agents, or Krokodyl (Crocodile) or Basyliszek (Basilisk), then ending up in Samson in Freta Street. Literary people would cure their hangovers in the canteen of the Writer’s Union and Literacka (Literary) café.

Overall, the surroundings of Nowy Świat, Krakowskie Przedmieście and the Old Town were a space for young, budding artists whose performance art couldn’t be contained within the four walls of galleries. However, these parts of the city also constituted an alcoholic trail bringing together students and professors, intellectualists and buffoons, punks and hippies. Additionally, they provided an alternative to the monumental socialist realist layout of the main axis of the Old Town by forming a cosier cityscape where each trace of artistic expression could be easily noticed and appreciated – but, of course, only within the tight-knit community of those who knew about it. It’s a sort of a paradox – the same neo-avant-garde circles who wished to participate in social life and have their say in current events cultivated their social relationships outside the main cultural currents and far from newly developing districts of the city.

Written originally in Polish by Xawery Stańczyk

Translated from Polish by Anna Potoczny

Sources

Language English

krzysztof wojciechowski

jacek malicki

avant - garde

20th century polish art

contemporary polish art

20th century art

The Avant-Garde