The Wild West A history of Wrocław’s Avant-Garde

19.06 – 13.09.2015 The Wild West A history of Wrocław’s Avant-Garde

Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

exhibition commissioner: Dorota Monkiewicz, Head of Wrocław Contemporary Museum
exhibition arrangement: Robert Rumas
curators: Michał Duda, Anka Herbut, Anna Mituś, Paweł Piotrowicz, Adriana Prodeus, Sylwia Serafinowicz, Piotr Stasiowski
co-ordination: Julia Leopold (Zachęta), Jola Bielańska (MWW)

Wrocław – a city in the Recovered Territories, which before the Second World War had nearly one million inhabitants, for decades could not be rebuilt after being destroyed in the Siege of Breslau. Out in these fascinating wild fields situated at the edge of a communist country where various cultures met, in a spirit of freedom and independence, artists have created their own original microcosm with bold experiments and international cooperation with partners from both sides of the Iron Curtain at its heart.

The exhibition presents works of art, films, documentary photographs, objets d’art, and recordings – nearly 500 works of visual arts, architecture, urbanism, theatre, film, design, and everyday life of Wrocław since the 1960s until the present.

The exhibition narration starts in the mid-sixties and it is connected with two great art visionaries moving to Wrocław: Jerzy Grotowski, the founder of the Laboratory Theatre, and Jerzy Ludwiński, the author of models of cultural institutions like Museum of Current Art and the founder of Mona Lisa Gallery. Wrocław is a city where Polish conceptualism and concrete poetry under Stanisław Dróżdż’s leadership started. Here artists like Jerzy Rosołowicz, Zdzisław Jurkiewicz, Jan Chwałczyk, Wanda Gołkowska, Natalia LL and Andrzej Lachowicz, Romuald and Anna Kutera worked. In Wrocław, next to the Laboratory Theatre, Helmut Kajzar and Kazimierz Braun, who worked with Tadeusz Różewicz, experimented with dramatic form. In the 1970s, the Museum of Architecture held exhibitions of utopia projects Terra where works of young artists like Arata Isozaki, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Tadao Ando, Rem Koolhaas – now world famous architects were shown. Among the graduates of the Higher School of Fine Arts in the city of Wrocław one can find so-called generation of Wrocław School of Posters with Jan Sawka, Jerzy Czerniawski, Jan Jaromir Aleksiun, and Eugeniusz Get-Stankiewicz. It is the Feature Film Studio in Wrocław where Andrzej Wajda made Ashes and Diamonds, Wojciech Jerzy Has – The Saragossa Manuscript, Agnieszka Holland – Screen Tests, and Jerzy Żuławski started working with On the Silver Globe. International meetings during Jazz nad Odrą Festival, the Festival of Open Theatre organised by Kalambur Theatre, or workshops run by the Laboratory are but few events that contribute to the image of open Wrocław. In the 1980s, the tradition of street happenings took on a new character through the actions of the Orange Alternative, the musical performances by Kormorany, as well as the artistic ‘situations’ created by LUXUS.

The exhibition “The Wild West. A history of Wrocław’s Avant-Garde” is not a story of the art of Wrocław. It is a story about this special city seen through the art created there. It is a story about a city with towers of gothic churches, buildings designed by Max Berg, Hans Poelzig, Erich Mendelsohn, or Hans Scharoun, where the newly arriving Poles have brought new values and most of all, new life.

Artists: Jan Jaromir Aleksiun, Stanisław Antosz i Katarzyna Chierowska (Antosz i Andzia), Gabor Attalai, Paolo Barrile, Krzysztof Bednarski, László Beke, Marianna Bocian, Włodzimierz Borowski, Jan Bortkiewicz, Piotr Bosacki, Dariusz Brygier, Olaf Brzeski, Cezary Chrzanowski, Jan Chwałczyk, Ewa Ciepielewska, Paweł Czepułkowski, Jerzy Czerniawski, Oskar Dawicki z chórem ARS CANTANDI, Rineke Dijkstra, Michał Diament, Zbigniew Dłubak, Tomasz Domański, Jerzy Domaradzki, Jean Marie Drot, Stanisław Dróżdż, Antoni Dzieduszycki, Jerzy Federowicz, Hervé Fischer, Karolina Freino, Eugeniusz Get-Stankiewicz, Artur „Goły” Gołacki, Wanda Gołkowska, Zbigniew Gostomski, Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak, Klaus Groh, Nicolas Grospierre, Jerzy Grotowski, grupa Luxus, grupa Łuhuu! (Katarzyna Goleń, Karina Marusińska, Agnieszka Rzeźniak i Natalia Rzeźniak), Bożena Grzyb-Jarodzka, Małgorzata Gusta, Oskar Hansen, Władysław Hasior, Agnieszka Holland, Zdzisław Holuka, IP Group (Łukasz Twarkowski, Jakub Lech, Anka Herbut, Bogumił Misala, Piotr Choromański), Rafał Jakubowicz, Jacek „Ponton” Jankowski, Konrad Jarodzki, Paweł Jarodzki, Mariusz Jodko, Zdzisław Jurkiewicz, Helmut Kajzar, Tadeusz Kantor, Małgorzata Kazimierczak, Paweł Kędzierski, Mirosław Koch, Maciej Kochajewski, Grzegorz Kolasiński, Bartosz Konieczny, Krzysztof „Konik” Konieczny, Tadeusz Konwicki, Bartosz Korzeniowski, Jerzy Kosałka, Marzenna Kosińska, Paweł Kowzan, Barbara Kozłowska, Grzegorz Królikiewicz, Tadeusz Kubiak, Marlena Kudlicka, Anna Kutera, Romuald Kutera, Natalia LL, Piotr Lachman, Andrzej Lachowicz, Suzy Lake, Olga Lewicka, Zbigniew Libera, Witold Lipiński, Witold Liszkowski, Bogusław Litwiniec, Jerzy Ludwiński, Zbigniew Makarewicz, Daniel Malone, Jolanta Marcolla, Dóra Maurer, Krzysztof Meisner, J. Michalewski, Maria Michałowska, Bogusław Michnik, Karel Miller, Eugeniusz Minciel, Lech Mrożek, Stefan Müller, Roland Nicolaus, Ernest Niemczyk, Zbigniew Olchowik, Piotr Olszański, Krzysztof Orluk, Laura Pawela, Géza Perneczky, Anna Płotnicka, Ludmiła Popiel, Małgorzata Potocka, Marek Puchała, Robert Rehfeldt, Andrzej Rogowski, Tadeusz Rolke, Wacław Ropiecki, Jerzy Rosołowicz, Andrzej Sapija, Jan Sawka, Carolee Schneemann, Allan Sekula, Stanisław Sielicki, Aleksander Sikora, Skalpel (Marcin Cichy i Igor Pudło), Krzysztof Skarbek, Piotr Skiba, Eugeniusz Smoliński, Michael Snow, Kama Sokolnicka, Zdzisław Sosnowski, Henryk Stażewski, Petr Štembera, Tomasz „Mniamek” Stępień, Bronisław Szubzda, Tomasz Szwed, Jan Świdziński, Elżbieta Tejchman, Miroljub Todorović, Endre Tót, Jerzy Troszczyński, Krzysztof Wałaszek, Torgeir Wethal, Anastazy Wiśniewski, Zorka Wollny, Paul Woodrow, Valie Export, Pierre Vandrepote, Jacek Zachodny, Krzysztof Zarębski, Wiesław Zdort, Carsten Zorn, Andrzej Żuławski

If you would like to revisit the exhibition, please present  the purchased ticket at our information point in the main hall. For more information contact: or call: 22 55 696 79.

An exhibition organised by Wrocław Contemporary Museum in collaboration with Zachęta — National Gallery of Art held as a part of the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016 programme.

Premiere display at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art. The exhibition will then be shown in Kunsthalle Košice, Kunstmuseum Bochum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.

The exhibition is organised under the patronage of Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland Prof. Małgorzata Omilanowska and President of the City of Wrocław Rafał Dutkiewicz.

exhibition commissioner: Dorota Monkiewicz, Head of Wrocław Contemporary Museum
exhibition arrangement: Robert Rumas
curators: Michał Duda, Anka Herbut, Anna Mituś, Paweł Piotrowicz, Adriana Prodeus, Sylwia Serafinowicz, Piotr Stasiowski
co-ordination: Julia Leopold (Zachęta), Jola Bielańska (MWW)

Dzikie pola. Historia awangardowego Wrocławia. Przewodnik / The Wild West. A History of Wrocław’s Avant-Garde. A guide, edited by Dorota Monkiewicz; authors: Olga Tokarczuk, Klaus Bachmann, Małgorzata Dawidek Gryglicka, Michał Duda, Jolanta Gromadzka, Anka Herbut, Agata Jakubowska, Anna Markowska, Anna Mituś, Magda Piekarska, Paweł Piotrowicz, Piotr Stasiowski, Mirosław Ratajczak, Sylwia Serafinowicz, Joanna Stembalska, Łukasz Wojciechowski.

sponsors: Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, National Forum of Music, ECC 2016

media partners: The Warsaw Voice, Stolica, Artinfo.pl, Gazeta Wrocławska, Radio Wrocław, Radio RAM, TVP Wrocław.

Co-financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

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    A history of Wrocław’s Avant-Garde

Information

The Wild West
A history of Wrocław’s Avant-Garde
19.06 – 13.09.2015

Zachęta – National Gallery of Art
pl. Małachowskiego 3, 00-916 Warsaw
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Godziny otwarcia:
Tuesday – Sunday 12–8 p.m.
Thursday – free entry
ticket office is open until 7.30 p.m.

sponsors: Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, National Forum of Music, ECC 2016
media partners: The Warsaw Voice, Stolica, Artinfo.pl, Gazeta Wrocławska, Radio Wrocław, Radio RAM, TVP Wrocław.
Co-financed by: the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.