Exchange Gallery Collection

By nature it is a multimedia collection, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs, films, video, audio works, and unconventional objects. It is itself a collective artistic work, consciously composed by the artist and art historian Józef Robakowski. It arose based on contacts, dialogue, and a disinterested exchange of artistic works and ideas within the independent art scene in Łódź, elsewhere in Poland, and internationally. The overriding principles for creation of the Exchange Gallery Collection were that it should be disinterested and anti-commercial, because by their nature the works in the collection could not be bought and sold. The collection provides a narrative of Polish and international avant-garde art from the 1970s to the present. It reflects Robakowski’s own interests, choices, friendships and predilections, presenting for example works from the circles of the Zero-61 Group, the Film Form Workshop, Chip-in Culture, Łódź Kaliska, mail art, concrete poetry, and the journal Infermental. It is one of the most important independent art collections in Eastern Europe, containing works created in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia.

The multimedia collection of the Exchange Gallery from Łódź comprises works by an international network of artists. The artists from Poland whose works are in the collection include Janusz Bałdyga, Krzysztof Bednarski, Kazimierz Bendkowski, Jerzy Bereś, Włodzimierz Borowski, Wojciech Bruszewski, Andrzej Ciesielski, Tatiana Czekalska, Witosław Czerwonka, Zbigniew Dłubak, Jan Dobkowski, Andrzej Dłużniewski, Stanisław Dróżdż, Leszek Golec, Jerzy Grzegorski, Piotr Grzybowski, Janusz Haka, Marek Janiak, Halina Jaworska, Elżbieta Kalinowska-Motkowicz, Adam Klimczak, Barbara Konopka, Jerzy Kosałka, Jacek Kryszkowski, Gerard Kwiatkowski, the Leeeżeć Cooperative, Natalia LL, Iwona Lemke, Jerzy Lewczyński, Edmund Łazikowski, Tomasz Machciński, Antoni Mikołajczyk, Mariella Nitosławska, Andrzej Partum, Andrzej Paruzel, Małgorzata Potocka, Andrzej Różycki, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Zygmunt Rytka, Adam Rzepecki, Jadwiga Sawicka, Mikołaj Smoczyński, Studio of Emotional Composition, Paweł Susid, YoAlsJetzt, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Marian Warzecha, Ryszard Waśko, Stefan Wegner, Ryszard Winiarski, Stefan Wojnecki, Jerzy Wroński, Krzysztof Zarębski, and Ewa Zarzycka. Foreign artists in the collection include Marina Abramović & Ulay, Sjoerd Buisman, Dalibor Chatrný, Robin Crozier, Christo, Douglas Davis, Dorothy Deschamps, Peter Downsbrough, Michael Druks, Robert Filliou, Tomislav Gotovac, Milan Grygar, Tibor Hajas, Sibylle Hofter, Kazuo Katase, Erika Kiffl, Jiří Kolář, Attila Kovács, František Kyncl, Kader Lagtaa, Sol LeWitt, Dóra Maurer, Eugenio Miccini, Yoshio Nakaima, Floris Neusüss, Richard Nonas, Marcel Odenbach, Orlan, Luciano Ori, Nam June Paik, Géza Perneczky, Sándor Pinczehelyi, Robert Rehfeldt, Alan Riddell, Paul Sharits, Robert Smithson, Jiří Valoch, Tibor Várnagy, and Emmett Williams. 

Józef Robakowski’s gift to the museum is supplemented by the Exchange Gallery Archive, partly accessible on the webpage of the MSN Warsaw Artists’ Archive, and by the Exchange Gallery Book Collection, accessible at the MSN Warsaw Reading Room.