90 years of the Polish Pavilion in Venice

The collection of the Zachęta ­— National Gallery of Art includes a print by Teresa Jakubowska entitled Venice (1969). The artist captured the crucial elements that identify the city: most notably, the gondolas, but also the pearls of its architecture — St Mark’s Basilica, with people in carnival masks dancing in front of it, the Doge’s palace, the church of Santa Maria della Salute, the Rialto bridge, and the Venetian lions.

Jakubowska presented Venice in a universal way, through a prism of the city’s well-known symbols, but the Polish audience and art aficionados can associate it with yet another important building: the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. This year marks the 90th anniversary of the opening of the pavilion, located like other national pavilions in the vast area of the Giardini della Biennale. The pavilion was designed by Brenno del Giudice (1888-1957), who, before becoming an architect, was a successful competitive rower. This graduate of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice (1908) is also the author of the poster for the 15th International Art Exhibition in Venice (1926) and the now defunct pavilions by the entrance to the Biennale grounds. He also designed the ossuary of the Vidor Cemetery (1925), the Church of Christ the King in Sant’Erasmo (1929) and the Marathan Tower in Turin (1932).

In 1932, the Polish Pavilion hosted its first exhibition. It was curated by art historian Mieczysław Treter, who oversaw the participation of Poles in the Venice Biennale until the outbreak of World War II. His book The Venice Pavilion of Polish Art (1933) features the pictures of this first exhibition made by the well-known photo studio Giacomelli. You can recognize Szczęsny Kowarski’s painting Rowers (p. 24), Portrait of the painter Kazimierz Brzozowski by Władysław Jarocki (p. 26), Self-portraits by Romuald Kamil Witkowski (p. 28), paintings by Ludomir Ślendziński (p. 30), or Wacław Borowski’s painting Narcotics from the collection of the Polish Museum in Chicago (p. 32).

The year 1948 was another important date in the history of Polish Pavilion. That year Poland participated in the Biennale for the first time since the end of World War II. In the magazine, we publish materials from our archives – the clippings from the Italian press from that year, and their translations. Poland was then represented by two artists: Jan Cybis and Tytus Czyzewski. The latter criticized Treter’s curatorial choices before the war, only to finally have an opportunity to show his works. That biennale was also important because the following year Poland did not participate in the event due to the political situation (Stalinist period).

The Zachęta collection has works by most of the artists who exhibited at the Biennale Arte after World War II. This is related to the history of the institution, which in the years 1951-1994 operated as the Central Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions (CBWA), and was also responsible for the Polish Pavilion in Venice. These include the works by Jan Cybis (who participated in the 1948 Biennale), Janina Kraupe-Świderska, Krystyna Łada-Studnicka, Teresa Pągowska (1952), Czesław Rzepiński (1952, 1960), Kazimierz Śramkiewicz, Juliusz Studnicki, Stanisław Teisseyre, Jacek Żuławski, Maria Hiszpańska-Neumann, Andrzej Jurkiewicz (1952), Tadeusz Kulisiewicz (1952, 1954, 1964), Konstanty Sopoćko, Wacław Waśkowski (1952), Marek Włodarski, Jerzy Nowosielski, Adam Marczyński, Tadeusz Dominik (1956), Maria Jarema, Artur Nacht-Samborski (1958), Tadeusz Kantor, Tymon Niesiołowski (1960), Tadeusz Brzozowski, Alina Szapocznikow (1962), Stefan Gierowski, Jerzy Tchórzewski (1964), Henryk Stażewski, Juliusz Studnicki (1966), Władysław Hasior (1970), Józef Szajna (1970, 1990), Stanisław Fijałkowski, Zbigniew Makowski, Andrzej Strumiłło, Karol Broniatowski (1972), Oskar Hansen (1976), Magdalena Abakanowicz (1980), Jerzy Duda-Gracz, Danuta Leszczyńska-Kluza, Stefan Wierzbicki (1984), Andrzej Majewski, Franciszek Starowieyski (1986), Izabella Gustowska, and Władysław Jackiewicz (1988). In 1994, the CBWA was transformed into the Zachęta State Gallery of Art, and in 2003 into the National Gallery of Art. The institution continues to organize the exhibitions in the Polish Pavilion in Venice, which is why its collection also includes works by other participants of the Biennale: Mirosław Bałka (1993), Zofia Kulik (1997), Katarzyna Kozyra (1999), Leon Tarasewicz (2001), Stanisław Dróżdż (2003), Artur Żmijewski (2005), Monika Sosnowska (2007), Krzysztof Wodiczko (2009), Yael Bartana (2011), Konrad Smoleński (2013), C.T. Jasper and Joanna Malinowska (2015), Roman Stańczak (2019), and Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (2022).

As part of a research project The history of exhibitions at the Zachęta — the Central Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions in the years 1949–1970 Marek Czapelski from the Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw analysed the exhibition of Oskar Hansen and Bohdan Urbanowicz in the Polish Pavilion at the 37th International Art Exhibition in Venice (1976). On our website we also present the catalogue of this exhibition and its press documentation.

Since 1991, Poland has also participated in the International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia. In 2008, the exhibition Hotel Polonia. The afterlife of buildings (artists: Nicolas Grospierre, Kobas Laksa, curators: Grzegorz Piątek, Jarosław Trybuś) won the most important award for a national pavilion – the Golden Lion. In 2012, the Polish Pavilion received a distinction for Katarzyna Krakowiak’s project Making the walls quake as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers (curator: Michał Libera). In 2020, the Architecture Biennale was postponed by a year due to the pandemic and opened only in 2021. For this reason Trouble in Paradise exhibition was additionally prepared in a digital version.

The works by Tadeusz Kulisiewicz, who participated in the Biennale Arte as many as five times (including twice before World War II – in 1930 and 1936), are now on view at the exhibition Kulisiewicz. Succint Beauty at the Zachęta. Katarzyna Kozyra, whose project Looking for Jesus. Library is being exhibited in the Mały Salon [Small Salon], received a distinction for The Men’s Bathhouse at the Biennale Arte in 1999. A review of the works of Magdalena Abakanowicz, who represented Poland in 1980, is on at Tate Modern, which hosts a large exhibition of the artist. The exhibition catalogue includes a text by one of the Zachęta’s curators, Michał Jachuła.

We invite you to watch Anna Zakrzewska’s documentary Reenchantment (2022) devoted to Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, representing Poland at the Biennale Arte this year, as well as online curatorial walkthrough, a foretaste of how it feels to visit the Polish Pavilion. Currently the exhibition Re-enchanting the World is on view at the Renaissance Castello Estense in Ferrara, and in April it will have its Polish première at the Zachęta — National Gallery of Art.

Joanna Waśko, Karolina Zychowicz, 23.12.2022