Avoiding Intermediary States. Andrzej Wróblewski (1927-1957)

A Polish-English monograph of the artist published by the Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the publishing house Hatje Cantz.

Avoiding Intermediary States. Andrzej Wróblewski (1927-1957) is a proposition of reading the artist’s creations which takes into consideration the many aspects of his activity – as an art historian, critic and reviewer of Kraków exhibitions and also a commentator of the artistic life of his times.

Avoiding Intermediary States… is chiefly a source publication which refers to the rudiments of the art historian’s technique. In this book the leading role is played by facts, found archival materials, photographs and documents, edited notes, until now unpublished manuscripts and also reconstructions of the artist’s selected exhibitions. The monograph contains works that were never reproduced, pieces known only from black and white photographs and creations that were thought to be lost or destroyed.

The book (…) tries to present anew the young painter, who comes to Kraków from Vilnius and doesn’t consider it an option to comply with the concepts of art which were being created by a group of friends in underground Kraków during occupation. He is an angry, wounded comer, desperate to find his own path in art without making any compromises – wrote professor Anna Markowska from the Institute of Art History of the Wrocław University.

The authors of the monograph ordered Andrzej Wróblewski’s oeuvre by verifying the datings of the works and presenting the titles given to the works by the artist, by his mother Krystyna Wróblewska after his death and by art historians. Additionally, after the analysis of the reverses of the works, reproductions of over 500 works by the artist were presented, including all the representations of such iconic topics as the bus driver or tombstones which had been found until today.

The difference between a painting and a file is that a painting may be used more diversely. A painting can express an abstract revolution. But not only that. A painting may, for one that wishes it, hide so many treasures of form and colour in an abstraction, that the effort of muffling one’s own laughter and the laughter of one’s companions and the effort of focusing for a few minutes will pay off plentifully. (…) An abstraction will not only show the revolutionary the climate of his soul and give him a pure, aesthetic emotion; abstraction will strengthen him with the inner logic of abstraction, will stimulate him with the annoying contrasts of abstraction, will inspire him with faith in himself and the future – Andrzej Wróblewski, How to Feel the Humanity of Abstract Art, Dziennik Literacki - periodical, 1948.

Avoiding Intermediary States. Andrzej Wróblewski (1927 - 1957) – Image Gallery

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Andrzej Wróblewski is perceived as a politically engaged artist, who consistently tried to embed his artistic ideas in society. His uncompromising devotion to the ideas of art resulted in a feeling of alienation, and the life stance he chose – a disagreement to top-down imposed ideologies, a feeling of mission to shape new art and consequently also the new post-war reality – bore frustration. Wróblewski was permeated by the feeling of the inseparability of art and life and by a never-ending tension caused by the contrast between an act of creating and the mundaneness of functioning in the framework of society, within the structure of the academy, within the structure of family, and among his Kraków fellow artists.

Professor Anna Markowska wrote also what follows:

The book doesn’t omit even the artist’s friends from his year (together with images of them), attempts at reaching important artistic events in which he participated and attempts at reaching, through these events, reproductions of the generally unknown painting works of Andrzej Wajda – a friend from the Academy of Fine Arts, who later became a co-creator of the so-called Polish Film School. Pioneering reconstructions were made of various exhibitions (including the celebrated showing at the Po Prostu salon), which up to know were known only from laconic mentions.

Avoiding Intermediary States. Andrzej Wróblewski (1927-1957)

Scientific conception and editing: Magdalena Ziółkowska, Wojciech Grzybała

Authors: Noit Banai, Boris Buden, Branislav Dimitrijević, Charles Esche, Eckhart Gillen, Wojciech Grzybała, Eryk Krasucki, Elżbieta Linnert, Barbara Majewska, Elżbieta Modzelewska, Ewa Skolimowska, Agnieszka Szewczyk, Andrzej Wróblewski, Magdalena Ziółkowska

Graphic design: Łukasz Paluch / AnoMalia Studio

752 pages, 864 illustrations

Publishers: The Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation, The Adam Mickiewicz Institute and Hatje Cantz Verlag

ISBN HC: 978-3-7757-3796-8

ISBN FAW: 978-83-935822-1-1

A publication co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage

Sources: the Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation, culture.pl, edited by AS, 11.07.2014

Translated by: Marek Kępa

artists of the 20th century

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