Zachęta has already hosted a number of important collections, whether public or private. These included, among other things, the Tom Podl collection, the collection of the Lvov Gallery of Art, or the paintings of Józef Czapski from the Swiss collection of Richard Aeschlimann. This time we are presenting Krzysztof Musiał’s collection – one of the largest and most interesting private collections of Polish art created in the recent years. The collection includes over 700 works spanning the period from the 1850s to the present. A broad selection of works from the Musiał collection was presented at the National Museum in Wrocław this autumn in the exhibition Zapisy przemian, and at the Pomeranian Princes’ Castle in Szczecin, and it will subsequently be shown at the National Museum in Cracow and the National Museum in Poznań. The Zachęta show, which is our Christmas gift to the public, presents the chronologically earlier part of the collection, ending at WWII. We show paintings, sculptures, and drawings of artists who are part of the history of Polish art, and whose works follow, or share an affinity with, the crucial trends of contemporary art: impressionism, expressionism, cubism, or fauvism. The collection’s newer part can be viewed at Galeria aTAK on Krakowskie Przedmieście 16/18.

In the first, middle room we show mainly realistic and academic 19th-century painting, the works of Wojciech Kossak, Henryk Siemiradzki, or Władysław Podkowiński, as well as later works, formally and thematically rooted in the 19th century but already showing modernistic tendencies. These works make references to new trends, such as impressionism in Józef Pankiewicz’s painting, or expressionism in Konrad Krzyżanowski’s. The bulk of this part of the collection is made up by a selection of post-impressionist paintings by Olga Boznańska including a number of still lifes and several portraits, including the masterpiece Portrait of Franciszek Siedlecki.

In the following gallery we shall find paintings and sculpturesopening a new chapter in history: Leopold Gottlieb’s cubistic paintings, Roman Kramsztyk’s and Eugeniusz Zak’s post-Cézanne landscapes, Andrzej Pronaszko’s and Zygmunt Waliszewski’s geometric and synthetic compositions, the sculptures of Bolesław Biegas and Henryk Kuna, or the paintings of Mela Muter, full if impressionistic charm. Concluding this part of the collection are three post-war paintings by Józef Czapski – challenging the premises of Kapism with their untypical colour ranges, crops, and formal solutions. Watercolours, pastels, drawings, and sketches selected from the large collection are shown in Mały Salon.       

artists: Bolesław Biegas, Wacław Borowski, Olga Boznańska, Leon Chwistek, Józef Czapski, Xawery Dunikowski, Eugeniusz Eibisch, Julian Fałat, Wojciech Gerson, Leopold Gottlieb, Gustaw Gwozdecki, Alicja Halicka, Alfons Karpiński, Wojciech Kossak, Roman Kramsztyk, Konrad Krzyżanowski, Henryk Kuna, Józef Tadeusz Makowski, Rafał Malczewski, Louis Marcoussis, Józef Mehoffer, Zygmunt Menkes, Piotr Michałowski, Mela Muter, Elie Nadelman, Tymon Niesiołowski, Józef Pankiewicz, Władysław Podkowiński, Andrzej Pronaszko, Ferdynand Ruszczyc, Kazimierz Sichulski, Henryk Siemiradzki, Władysław Ślewiński, Jan Stanisławski, Zygmunt Waliszewski, Eugeniusz Waniek, Wacław Wąsowicz, Joachim Weingart, Wojciech Weiss, Marek Włodarski, Jan Wojnarski, Witold Wojtkiewicz, Leon Wyczółkowski, Stanisław Wyspiański, Eugeniusz Zak, August Zamoyski