Urszula Broll

Painter, co-creator of the St-53 and Oneiron artistic groups and one of the most important figures of Silesian art in the second half of the 20th century. She was born on 17th March 1930 in Katowice in a Silesian family of Polish-German ancestry and died on 17th February 2020 in Przesieka in the Karkonosze Mountains.

Mon, 03/17/1930 - 12:00 - Mon, 02/17/2020 - 12:00

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From 1949 to 1955, Broll studied at a newly founded Katowice branch of the State School of Fine Arts in Wrocław (today the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław), located in her hometown in the Silesia region. The artist majored in propaganda graphics and poster design – a field emblematic of the epoch. It was then that she met Konrad Swinarski (who would later become a prominent theatre director), who introduced her and other students to the aesthetic theory of Władysław Strzemiński. The aspiring artists founded a self-education group that transformed into the art group St-53 in 1953 – named for the date and place of its emergence, as Katowice was briefly named Stalinogród. Strzemiński, who died just some months before, became an informal patron of the group’s artistic explorations. As Broll reminisced years later:

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Imperceptibly, a small island full of wonders emerged on Socialist Realist concrete. [...] We devoutly gazed at postcards with reproductions of impressionists, smuggled from the West, held fascinating discussions about rotten Western literature, and listened to nostalgic guitar songs.

The early exhibitions of St-53 were informal. The first was held in 1953 at a private house, the second a year later at the apartment of Maria Obremba, a member of the group. In her earliest works, created while still at the academy, Broll explored Silesian themes – as demonstrated in Kobiety Śląskie (Silesian Women) or Stara Ślązaczka (Old Silesian Woman). In the latter, the tight framing is stretched by a bulky figure of an old woman rendered loosely and flatly, in a limited colour palette dominated by yellows. Broll went beyond academic – and Socialist Realist, for that matter – rules of shape and space building. The post-Impressionist form, short brush strokes and saturated hues were not welcome at the academy – her formalist diversion from Socialist Realist standards earned her an admonition.

Amongst the early paintings by St-53 members, Broll’s works stand out for their subtle use of colour. As the writer Julian Przyboś noted: ‘Urszula Broll is without doubt the most sensitive to colour. She is the only one in the group to build some paintings by colour and colour only’. Broll went through subsequent circles of initiation in the group, working her way through the history of different avant-garde movements, filtered by Strzemiński’s theory. Having completed a series of portraits of Silesian women, she moved on to paint some cubist works.

Works by Urszula Broll – Image Gallery

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Exploring different styles and discussing them was at the core of St-53 – its members held heated discussions about the primacy of analytical cubism over synthetic cubism (or the other way around). Broll’s output from that time shows an evolution from forms deconstructed into grids of lines and arches, through prismatic renditions of still lifes, to industrial landscapes built synthetically with flat areas of colour. The first official exhibition of St-53, organised in 1956 in Stalinogród (as Katowice was briefly named), was in fact the final moment of the group’s existence. It was here that Broll met Andrzej Urbanowicz, her future husband, co-creator of the Oneiron group and co-host of a famed workshop located in an attic at 1 Piastowska Street.

In the mid-1950s, elements of chance started appearing in Broll’s compositions – forms emerging from spilled and blown ink. In the second half of the decade, Broll’s works were dominated by non-geometric abstraction, influenced by art informel imported to Poland from Paris by Tadeusz Kantor, among others. Broll managed to maintain an individual character and avoid the influence of specific artists. In 1958-1959, she painted a series titled Przekształcenia (Transformations), remarkable for its rich, pulsing texture achieved by slow-drying, brightly coloured paint and varnish. Alikwoty (Aliquotes) from 1960 to 1964 show Broll’s further evolution towards matter painting – pieces of wood, sand grains and jute scraps are set in coarse paint.

The so-called ‘meditative paintings’ became a turning point in Broll’s career. Mandala-shaped, they organically appeared in Broll’s work in the 1960s, stemming from interest in Eastern traditions on the one hand and surrealist automatic painting on the other. As the artist herself said:

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A completely new space opened up for me when I came across the first translations of Eastern spiritual texts. My inner tension was high and when I sat down to paint on paper, simple geometric forms appeared – circles, triangles, squares. I didn’t know what any of this was about. I let my intuition express itself outside the constraints of rational consciousness. [...] Several years later I got a book of Hindu tantric art reproductions. I was hugely surprised to find out how many hidden meanings and vital forces there are in geometric forms. It turned out that my intuition brought me to an art form that has been practiced for thousands of years.

While Broll’s mandalas were painted on an easel and were not strictly part of Buddhist meditative practice, they are not merely formalist interpretations of Eastern mandalas. As an adept of tantric Buddhism, Broll treated them as something much more than a style – they were part of a path to self-discovery. As she described it: ‘I have a very deep relation to my works. I create them for myself to discover things I don’t yet know about myself… Quiet commune with the mandala and my own experience lets me find mental balance’. Broll explored Hindu mysticism, Taoism, Zen philosophy and tantra and she even translated Jung’s texts into Polish. These studies were part of her artistic practice. Broll’s abstractionism is rich with metaphysical meanings, akin to the work of Hilma af Klint, who was rediscovered in recent years as an abstraction pioneer.

Broll’s mandalas are vertical compositions in delicate, washed-out colours. The geometric and axial compositions starkly differ from coarse, expressive matter painting works. With time, delicate watercolour appeared alongside the usual oil on canvas. Broll set out on a completely individual path. As Katarzyna Kucharska wrote: ‘Her new approach to the creative act distinguished Broll’s work from both Party-approved Socialist Realist art and the neo-avant-garde of the time’.

She was not, however, alone in her philosophical and spiritual inquiry. Broll and Urbanowicz’s studio on Piastowska Street was visited by fellow artists Henryk Waniek, Zygmunt Stuchlik and Antoni Halor. These meetings evolved into seminars about art, philosophy and Eastern spirituality and gave rise to the formation of the Oneiron group. The name – literally meaning ‘dream’ in Greek – was proposed by Waniek. There were some different names in consideration, too – Urbanowicz suggested that the group be called Liga Spostrzeżeń Duchowych (League of Spiritual Discernments), abbreviated to LSD.

Oneiron became the central point of counterculture in Silesia. The group also ran an underground press, publishing texts by Jung, Mircea Eliade, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, among others. The Piastowska Street studio was a place of art but also – perhaps most importantly – housed discussions about philosophy, religion, magic, the occult and gnosis. Oneiron collectively created Leksykon (Encyklopedia Symboli) (Lexicon: Encyclopaedia of Symbols) – 30 black square pieces of cardboard, the so-called ‘black cards’, each assigned to a letter of the alphabet and filled with words and drawings in a limited colour palette – white, silver and gold. Sometimes called Nowe Bezpretensjonalne Pismo Święte w Obrazkach (New Unpretentious Holy Scripture in Pictures) or Nowy Bezpretensjonalny Chaos w Obrazkach (New Unpretentious Chaos in Pictures), they were created between 1967 and 1969. Phrases such as ‘tree’, ‘pain’ or ‘Atman’ were the starting points. ‘Atman’, which is Sanskrit for ‘breath’, became one of the key concepts in Broll’s art. As Janusz Zagrodzki wrote: ‘[Atman] is a life element, an attainment of full consciousness, peak of personal growth that allows for a spiritual relation with Brahman’.

In the early 1970s, Oneiron members were mostly focused on their individual work and the artistic group transformed into Poland’s first Buddhist community. In the mid-1970s, Broll limited her exhibition presence (although she never fully refrained from public displays of her work) and further shifted her focus to Buddhism. Starting in 1974, Broll and Urbanowicz published the first Buddhist periodical in the Polish People’s Republic, titled Droga (Path) and later Droga Zen (The Zen Path).

In 1983, Broll left Katowice to follow a Buddhist community and settled in a small village called Przesieka. As the artist herself claimed, she finally found her place there. She remained an active painter and participant in regional artistic initiatives for the rest of her life. The retrospective exhibition Atman Means Breath, which opened in the summer of 2020, curated by Katarzyna Kucharska in Królikarnia, presented a comprehensive display of Broll’s entire artistic path. The artist passed away before it opened, on 17th February 2020, in Przesieka.

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