The exhibition Sculpture in Search of a Place is yet another one in a series of cross-sectional thematic exhibitions at the Zachęta, devoted each year to a different artistic medium. It tackles the subject of the identity of Polish sculpture over the last sixty years — not so much as a chronology of artistic activity, but as a presentation of the phenomena and creative attitudes that have been essential for its development.

Is the key period in modern Polish history of 1944–1949 equally important in the field of art? How were the first years of the new, dynamically changing socio-political reality and atmosphere, on the one hand the “euphoria of rebuilding” and on the other the “Great Fear” interpreted by artists? The exhibition is an attempt to answer the question as to how the complicated social moods and political tensions in post-war Poland found their expression in the visual arts, photographs, film and also architecture and design.

The exhibition presents a dynamic map of the post-WWII art world in the context of Polish artists’ and art critics’ travels to Europe and beyond. Marked on the map have been the points and vectors of those travels but also how – despite the Iron Curtain and the policies of mutual isolation – knowledge and inspirations were exchanged. The titular ‘migrations’ pertain not only to the artists themselves and their official and semi-official foreign trips but also to the phenomenon of travelling works and wandering ideas.