Henryk Stażewski. Nine Rays of Light in the Sky

"Nine Rays of Light in the Sky" is a show with which our Museum intends to re-introduce to Warsaw dwellers an exceptional artist and resident of Warsaw.

Henryk Stażewski was born in 1894 in Warsaw. He was contemporary to a modern world and to modern art. He introduced the avant-garde movement to the independent Poland of the early 1920s. Stażewski created paintings, posters, interior designs and stage designs which were dictated by geometry. He presented his projects in automobile showrooms, because at that time, they were the sanctuaries of modernity.

He cooperated with Piet Mondrian and coorganized the first exhibition of Kazimierz Malewicz’s painting outside Russia – it took place in 1927 in Hotel Polonia in Warsaw. In the 1960s, Stażewski moved to a studio on the roof of an apartment block at Świerczewskiego Street, today’s Alley of Solidarity. Every day between six and eleven, he painted. Then he took the bus to the café of the Polish Architect Association in Foksal Street, where his fans were expecting him. He returned to his studio before five and there, he opened a salon – a real center of Warsaw’s artistic life, frequently visited by another artist strongly associated with Warsaw, poet Miron Białoszewski.

The sky painting invented by Henryk Stażewski, which Varsovians could admire on December 5, 2009, had first been presented onMay 9, 1970 in Wroclaw, during the art symposium “Wroclaw 70”. The illumination could be observed by thousands of people all over the city. “Its view from a distance of twelve kilometers was utterly marvelous”, commented the press of that time.

The reconstruction of Nine Rays of Light in the Sky is coorganized by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and The Council of the Capital City of Warsaw, as part of the contest for the title of European Capital of Culture 2016. This event will be the first one from a series of artistic projects present in public space, realized by the Museum and the Warsaw authorities in the coming years.