Adolf Ryszka. Space bears shadow.

This exhibition seeks to become something of an essay that distinguishes metaphors for our current times present in the art of Adolf Ryszka (1935–1995), a forerunner of new figuration, a tendency developing in parallel to the new wave in film and literature. The spotlight is on Ryszka’s famous works as well as those hitherto unknown, and the show features a group of small-scale sculptures that resonate with notions of organicity and concepts such as the uncanny, permutations, variability, imaginism. The sculptor built his own unique iconosphere by interpreting atrophy processes, combining the expression of the tragic and the vital, through opaque dialogues with visions of prostrate victims of wars in Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 

Color and paint. Krzysztof Gliszczynski and Tadeusz Gustaw Wiktor. From the series language of art: juxtapositions.

The idea behind the exhibition of paintings by Krzysztof Gliszczyński and Tadeusz Gustaw Wiktor, which inaugurates the exhibition series Languages of Art: Juxtapositions at the Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, is to compare and contrast the oeuvres of two artists who follow the same convention and situate the same formal means at the heart of their artistic languages, and yet achieve a completely different expression and therefore formulate a different message. Not only does this format showcase the oeuvre of significant Polish artists, but also complements the purely artistic dimension of their work with educational qualities by opening up the possibility of a more in-depth analysis of formal aspects of art. It unveilsthe wealth of potential ways in which the artwork can be creatively shaped on the basis of individual elements of painting’s language and its narrative potential.

Guide: Amina Olszewska