Polish Sculpture in Ghana: From Socialist Friendship to a Vanished Monument
The monument to the President of Ghana, created by Polish sculptor Alina Ślesińska, served as an inspiration for the exhibition on the relations between our country and certain African states in the 1960s.
From 6 September to 5 October at the Foundation for Contemporary Art in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and from 12 September to 13 December 2025 at Red Clay Studio in Tamale, an exhibition titled One Man Does Not Rule a Nation will be held. Its centre is a monument to Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of independent Ghana. The exhibition is curated by Max Cegielski and Janek Simon, and the author of the monument, created in the early 1960s and now no longer in existence, was the Polish sculptor Alina Ślesińska. In autumn 2024, the exhibition was inaugurated at the TRAFO Centre for Contemporary Art in Szczecin. Now, this institution, together with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, will present the exhibition in two cities in Ghana. Consequently, audiences in both countries will have the opportunity to gain a broader insight into the reasons, background and context of the Polish People’s Republic’s cooperation with nations of the Global South, in this case primarily African nations. But also, to take a closer look at the author of the sculpture, whose life and creative output are also extraordinary.
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Max Cegielski, photo: Tomasz Urbanek / DDTVN / East News, Janek Simon with a piece from the ‘Meta Folklore’ series, photo: Galeria Mondi
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Kwame Nkrumah governed Ghana from 1957 to 1966 before being overthrown in a coup d’état.
Photo of the exhibition ‘One Man Does Not Rule a Nation’ in TRAFO Centre for Contemporary Art in Szczecin, 2024/25, curators: Max Cegielski &Janek Simon, photo: Daniel Rumiancew
He was an independence and anti-colonial activist involved in the Pan-African movement, as well as a key figure in Ghana’s pursuit of independence; the country was a leader in the decolonisation process in Africa. He was also a socialist, seeking political allies in other countries, and it was socialism that formed the basis of relations between the Eastern Bloc states and Ghana, as well as other nations in the Middle East and Africa, in the second half of the 20th century. Some researchers refer to this political and economic phenomenon as ‘socialist globalisation’, as if it were intended to serve as a kind of counterbalance to the collaborating Western countries during the Cold War. Cooperation between the People’s Republic of Poland and countries of the Global South took many forms. Beyond the strictly economic sphere, it also extended to other areas, including art, architecture and urban planning.
In 2012, the Bęc Zmiana Foundation published a book titled Postmodernizm Jest Prawie w Porządku. Polska Architektura po Socjalistycznej Globalizacji [Postmodernism Is Almost Okay. Polish Architecture after Socialist Globalisation], in which the authors – Łukasz Stanek, Piotr Bujas, Alicja Gzowska, and Aleksandra Kędziorek – examine how the experiences of Polish architects working in countries of the Global South influenced their later work in Poland. Stanek, an architectural historian researching the work of Polish architects in African countries and the Middle East, explained in this publication:
The export of architecture and urban planning was a source of pride for the People’s Republic of Poland and part of the political and economic support provided by the socialist bloc to newly established countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Drawing on the experience of rebuilding Warsaw and Gdańsk, as well as constructing new cities such as Nowa Huta and Nowe Tychy, Polish architects and urban planners contributed to the spread of modernist architecture and functionalist urban planning in the 1960s. Their input included master plans for Baghdad (1967, 1973) and Aleppo (from 1962), administrative buildings in Kabul, museums in Nigeria (from 1969), market areas in Accra (1967), and government buildings in Ghana.
In his other book, Architecture in Global Socialism. Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War, published in 2020, Stanek discusses selected designs and projects developed in Ghana by architects from Poland, the Soviet Union, East Germany, Yugoslavia, and Hungary, among others. Design teams from Eastern Bloc countries brought along European post-war modernism, which firstly faced challenges related to the tropical climate (Polish architects usually had no experience in designing in such different climatic conditions) and, secondly, blended with inspirations originating from colonial architecture left behind by the British.
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Ghana Trade Fair Centre, photo: Anthere / CC BY-SA 4.0
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Polish architects Jacek Chyrosz and Stanisław Rymaszewski arrived in Ghana in 1962. They were tasked with supporting Ghanaian designers, among other things, in constructing marketplaces in Accra. Their creation, which boosted Ghana’s significance in the region and demonstrated its innovativeness, was one of President Nkrumah’s ideas (the chief designer of the extensive complex was Ghanaian architect Victor Adegbite). Poles worked in Ghana until 1967, and in 1962, they designed, among others, Ghana’s national pavilion at the international trade fair in Lagos, Nigeria.
The projects carried out in the early 1960s were so promising that the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs planned to expand cooperation with other countries on the African continent as well. By the end of the decade, the Department V Work Plan for 1969 was adopted, with a separate chapter outlining plans for cooperation with ‘Black Africa’. The document emphasised:
The international significance of African countries is not only maintained but also steadily increasing, particularly within the UN and other international organisations. African nations are objectively our allies in pushing forward just peace initiatives (voting in the UN on the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes) [...]. In this context, it is necessary for socialist countries, including Poland, to take appropriate steps not only to preserve but also to expand our ‘assets’. Since we cannot achieve this through economic penetration due to our limited capacity to provide assistance, we should place greater emphasis on foreign policy. African countries may, in the future, become, alongside socialist countries, the main markets for our exports of machinery and equipment. An important element of foreign policy concerning African nations should be the recruitment and employment of specialists from the Polservis Foreign Trade Agency.
Polish sculptor in Africa
The action plans adopted at that time were implemented in many countries – in Ghana, they were disrupted by a military coup d’état, which resulted in the overthrow of the president. Before that happened, however, another project had been carried out in Ghana, which became the subject of the exhibition One Man Does Not Rule a Nation by Max Cegielski and Janek Simon.
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Alina Ślesińska, Warszawa, 1960s, photo: Andrzej Wiernicki / Forum
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In 1964, Alina Ślesińska, a highly regarded Polish sculptor, arrived in Ghana. She was invited to design a monument to Kwame Nkrumah. The Ghanaian leader already had one monument, created by Italian artist Nicola Cataudelli, but that statue had a very classical, traditional form. Presumably, a new concept was sought – one that would better reflect the ambitions and aspirations of an African country aiming to present itself as progressive.
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‘Motherhood’ sculpture by Alina Ślesińska at the Square of Morning Concerts in Kołobrzeg, photo: Marek Bazak / East News
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Alina Ślesińska was perfectly suited for this task. Born in 1922, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and Warsaw, and was a student of Xawery (Ksawery) Dunikowski, whom she regarded as her master and mentor. The beginning of her artistic career coincided with a period of political thaw, when, after years of socialist realism, modernism and modern forms returned to art and architecture. The artist had a classical education and an excellent understanding of sculptural matter. Her early works included historical architectural sculptures intended for the reconstructed historical buildings of Warsaw, as well as realistic portraits. Over time, however, she started producing works that were very modern in terms of expression, approaching abstraction. In the 1960s, she also created a series titled Propozycje Dla Architektury [Proposals for Architecture], which expanded beyond the traditional understanding of sculpture to encompass space and urban planning.
Ślesińska’s work was in harmony with the concept of statehood, which the Ghanaian authorities also sought to emphasise through projects in urban spaces. When the artist arrived in Accra, she began searching for inspiration for the form the monument would take. She worked on it for a year and a half in Accra and nearby Winneba, where the monument was ultimately erected. The sculptor created a sword, the main part of the sculpture, which was a reference to the traditions of the local Efutu and Ashanti peoples, and also carried the symbol of a ‘sword against colonialism’. The sword-shaped pedestal was topped with a sculpted portrait of the president. Unveiled in May 1965, it was dismantled only a few months later: just as Nkrumah’s rule was overthrown, his statue was also knocked off its pedestal. Soon afterwards, the sculpture was forgotten.
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Photo of the exhibition ‘One Man Does Not Rule a Nation’ in TRAFO Centre for Contemporary Art in Szczecin, 2024/25, curators: Max Cegielski & Janek Simon, photo: Daniel Rumiancew
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Alina Ślesińska also faced difficult times. Following many successes during the political thaw in 1966, such as a major monographic exhibition of her work at Zachęta, she fell out of favour in the 1970s. She lost her position and spent the last years of her creative life focusing on drawing.
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Photo of the exhibition ‘One Man Does Not Rule a Nation’ in TRAFO Centre for Contemporary Art in Szczecin, 2024/25, curators: Max Cegielski & Janek Simon, photo: Daniel Rumiancew
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For the exhibition, Cegielski and Simon built a platform directly inspired by the pedestal of the original monument in Winneba, designed by Alina Ślesińska. At its centre, they placed a composition reminiscent of Nkrumah’s monument (though not a copy of it), and around it, they arranged a series of exhibits, documents, photographs and archival materials that tell the stories of people connected with the project, Nkrumah and Ślesińska, as well as Poland’s relations with the countries of the Global South.
In the history of the vanished monument to President Kwame Nkrumah, many threads intertwine that are worth recalling from obscurity. One is the sculptor’s own life story, which, as recalled by curator Ewa Toniak in a contemporary monographic exhibition at Zachęta in 2007, remains full of mysteries and extraordinary twists and turns; it can also be a story about a woman establishing her independent position in the art world. Another thread revealed on this occasion is the still little-studied process of cooperation between the People’s Republic of Poland and other Eastern Bloc countries with nations of the Global South, its ambiguous political and ideological background, and its fully measurable, tangible effects. Finally, the contemporary attitude towards the events of that time: how President Nkrumah’s actions are perceived and evaluated today in Ghana itself, and how this international cooperation is remembered in Poland – these projects shed new light on the achievements of the Polish People’s Republic. In that African country, it was Poland that was the source and inspiration for modernisation.
Translated from Polish by Agnieszka Mistur
