Documentation

Andrzej Wróblewski - FROM WITHIN / FROM WITHOUT

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw organized in the begining of September 2013 an international conference dedicated to the life and work of Andrzej Wróblewski (1927-1957) – a legend of Polish post-war art.

In Poland, Andrzej Wróblewski is undoubtedly one of the most famous post-war artists. But in Poland only. It is time his prolific and most diverse oeuvre, however painted over a very short period of time and in the most troubled of times, receives a more international attention. The conference organized at the Modern Art Museum in Warsaw will propose the first extensive project for a new reading of this work in a global context. This conference will look at his idiosyncratic and highly complex oeuvre from many different perspectives, gathering international and Polish scholars. It follows a closed seminar that took place in Krakow and Warsaw in 2012 and established the basis for an international perspective on Wróblewski’s oeuvre.

Wróblewski was approached not only as a painter involved in political changes in Poland at the turn of the 1950s, but also as a creator of an immensely suggestive vision of war and degradation of man. Simultaneously, his oeuvre cannot be conveniently pigeonholed as he also created propaganda paintings and formal experiments on the verge of abstraction. Torn between political involvement and artistic experimentation, he created an individual, highly suggestive formula for figurative painting, which still inspires and serves as a benchmark for next generation artists. The conference at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw aims at creating new interpretations and put the artist’s rich legacy into the international context of art history.

The two days symposium was divided in four sessions, with a panel discussion. The texts presented at the conference will be part of the publication which will accompany Andrzej Wróblewski’s comprehensive exhibition planned at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in autumn 2014.