11th Baltic Mini Textile Gdynia 8.03–9.06.2019

The Baltic Mini Textile Gdynia competition has been held in Gdynia since 1993. Over the course of 25 years, we have seen works by artists from all over the globe, including Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia. The review was initiated and launched by the Gdynia-based artist Aleksandra Bibrowicz-Sikorska.

The exhibition features 50 textile miniatures selected by the jury of the 11th Baltic Mini Textile Gdynia competition from among 324 works submitted by 155 artists. This year’s GRAND PRIX of Mayor of Gdynia was awarded to Ieva Krūmiņa (Latvia) for her miniature Private Endlessness. The two equivalent Prizes of the Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship were awarded to Myriam Dion (Canada) for her Procession of Faith and Magdalena Soboń (Poland) for her Timeless drawings 2. The Gdynia City Museum Prize went to Baiba Osīte (Latvia) for Water Lilies. The jury also awarded four distinctions to Marijke Leertouwer (the Netherlands), Sue Stone (UK), Elizabeth Pien (Denmark) and Gertraud Enzinger (Austria).

The competition guidelines gave the artists a high degree of freedom when choosing their topics. However, there were several recurring themes and intersections which helped us connect works by artists from different places and allow them to enter into dialogue. At the 11th Baltic Mini Textile Gdynia competition, the artists frequently turned their attention towards the same fabric by exploring its limits; alternatively they posed questions about the world and what lies beyond it – what is material and nonmaterial, or physical and metaphysical. With this in mind, we organised the artworks into the following thematic blocks: Textile References, Crossing the Boundaries, Nature and Infinity.

The extraordinary attributes of textile miniatures were explored through their close ties with the latest trends in contemporary art. The strict size restrictions meant the resulting miniatures served as veritable laboratories revealing the new possibilities presented by artistic textiles. The small scale let artists experiment with complex, intricate techniques and use delicate, ephemeral materials. The huge variety of the artists’ own techniques and fascinating artistic solutions show us that textile miniatures are a fully independent, important genre, full of potential.

Anna Śliwa

ADDRESSS
Muzeum Miasta Gdyni
ul. Zawiszy Czarnego 1
81-374 Gdynia

OPENING HOURS
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays 10:00 –18:00
Thursdays 12:00–20:00
Saturdays, Sundays, holidays 10:00–17:00

TICKETS
reduced: PLN 5 (per person)
normal: PLN 10 (per person)
family: PLN 15 (maximum two adults and 8 children under 18)

Dorota Nieznalska

VIOLENCE AND MEMORY

Research by the SRV Sektion Rassen- und Volkstumsforschung

(in memory of my family, and those who experienced forced resettlement in 1947 during “Operation Vistula”)

cooperation: Dariusz Sitek assistance in making the ambrotypes: Aleksandra Wolter

In cooperation with the MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow.
The MOCAK collection. With the financial support of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. This project has been made possible through the cooperation of the Jagiellonian University Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology and the Jagiellonian University Archive in Krakow.

The main aim of the installation, featuring some remarkable materials created during World War II and presently found in the Jagiellonian University’s Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology and the Jagiellonian University Archive, is an attempt to critically appraise their equivocal „scientific” value, in part to remember the cultural heritage of the regions explored at the time. The archival photographic materials come from the racial ethnology and reconnaissance section of the Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit (IDO). According to the intentions of Hans Frank (Governor General GG), the institute was to be transformed into a German university in Krakow. These photographs were meant to display the natural virtues of the General Government and the cultural backwardness of the conquered lands of Poland, to prove the Germans had been eternally present in the “East,” explained as “the Germans spreading civilization.”

This project also reflects upon the use of anthropological and ethnographic methods and art history by National Socialism, showing how science was entangled with totalitarianism, and the ambiguous status of neutral and seemingly innocent reconnaissance and ethnographic photographs. The photographs depicting Lemko, Polish, Ukrainian, and Goral peoples are not so very different from traditional reconnaissance and ethnographic photography documents. Obviously, all the activities involved in studying peoples in the lands occupied during World War II, such as photographs of faces and various body parts, medical interviews, and psychological, sociological, and anthropological questionnaires, were obligatory, and participation was ensured by force.

The installation is composed of a large, steel construction, symbolically alluding to the form of the Subcarpathian iconostasis. The piece has a symmetrical frame, containing digital copies of archives printed on steel plate. The photographs have been selected from the IDO racial ethnology and reconnaissance section. The form of the iconostasis makes reference to the culture, customs, and Greek-Catholic religion of the populace: Ruski Gorals, Lemkos, and Ukrainians. In place of the holy images, apostles, and prophets, we find images of village folk. This gesture of shifting or altering the hierarchy aims to commemorate and turn attention to social groups who, in the wake of the military operations and ethnic cleansings of 1947, known as “Operation Vistula,” were displaced from Roztocze, Pogórze Przemyskie, Bieszczady, and Lower Beskids. With this, the cultural heritage of these regions was irreparably destroyed.

Additional information:

What Is or Was the IDO Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit:

Founded in Krakow, this German institution with academic ambitions was created during World War II, after the closure of the Jagiellonian University. The Nazis were carrying out their plan to exterminate the intellectual elite of the conquered nation. On 20 April 1940 – Adolf Hitler’s birthday – the Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit was established by the command of Hans Frank, head of the General Government. Frank appointed himself the Chair, and made the director Wilhelm Coblitz. The institute was installed in the Jagiellonian buildings, with branches created in Warsaw and Lwów [presently Lvov, Ukraine]; others were planned. IDO was divided into eleven sections, exploring a multitude of issues. It was conceived as a branch of a future German university, like the one created in Poznań (Reichsuniversitat Posen). Employees of German Eastern Studies and academic centers in Berlin, Königsberg, Wrocław, and Vienna contributed to its organization. Its publications spread propaganda (primarily through their periodical, Die Burg) justifying Germany’s aggression on Polish lands, and evoking the theory of Germany’s cultural mission throughout history in Eastern Europe.

Several departments, mainly the racial ethnological section headed by Austrian anthropologists, embarked on field trips. Their destinations included the ghetto in Tarnów, Podhale, the Sądecki region, and Lemko villages. Some IDO projects and analyses involved goals that the German authorities wanted to achieve in Central and Eastern Europe after the war. These were both economic and ethnic: the separation of ethnic groups and the segregation of conquered peoples. The German organizers of IDO used the same methods in creating Einsatzstab Reichsminister Rosenberg, situated in the old headquarters of the Jewish Academic Institute (Jidiszer Wisnszaftlecher Institut, YIVO) in Wilno [presently Vilnius, Lithuania] – local experts were employed as lower assistants, and were indispensable in compensating for the imported Reich workers’ shortcomings in language and knowledge.

In mid 1944, when news of German military catastrophes were coming in from the front lines, Director Coblitz ordered the evacuation of the IDO collections. They were hidden in two Bavarian castles: Zandt and Miltach. What remained of IDO in Polish territory after the war (the “old IDO” and other piecemeal, scattered, or stolen materials) eventually joined the collections of several Polish archive institutions: the Jagiellonian University Archive, the State Archive in Krakow, the Head Commission for Investigating Nazi Crimes in Poland (presently the Institute of National Memory) and the Archive of New Acts in Warsaw.

When Bavaria was taken by the American army, the IDO collections were transported to the USA under the care of the War Department. In February 1947, the institution that was storing the crates – the Medical Intelligence Section of the United States’ Surgeon General’s Office – passed on seven of them to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Two or three crates containing the personal files of IDO workers were later withdrawn and deposited in the storage houses of the Alexandria military fort. It seems they were next under the jurisdiction of America’s central archive, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). In 1951, the IDO documents that were deposited at the NARA were handed over to the German Federal Republic, at its government’s request, along with other Reich archivalia, after being committed to microfiche. In Germany, part of the IDO collection was deposited at the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, and then, in 1996 it was taken to the new headquarters in Berlin, where it is stored under number R 521V (Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit). In the Berlin Bundesarchiv there is also an important group of documents concerning the IDO: Bericht über den Aufbau und die Forschungsaufgaben des Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit iIn Zandt und Miltach vom 3. Februar 1945 (R 52II, Kanzlei des Generalgouverneurs complex, File 173).

On 22 January 2008, the Polish Embassy in Washington ceremonially transferred the Sektion Rassen- und Volkstumsforschung collection in the framework of Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit (IDO) to the Jagiellonian University via the heads of the Smithsonian Institution. The Krakow school was represented by Prof. Karol Musioł, and the Jagiellonian University Archive by Director Dr. Krzysztof Stopka. Until that time, the archive had been stored at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) in Washington. Following an agreement signed on 14 July 2006, between the Jagiellonian University and NMNH, the collections were conserved and digitized. The Jagiellonian University and the US Holocaust Museum in Washington covered the costs of the endeavor.

Brian Griffin is an outstanding photographer and the author of the most significant pop and rock bands’ albums’ covers of the 80s. The artist photographed Post Punk, New Wave or New Romantic bands and musician for years.

The exhibited material was selected from over 160 photo shoots. They were produced for more than 100 musicians and artists. One of the exhibition’s elements are alternative versions of album covers for Depeche Mode, who are one of the headliners of Open’er festival 2018. Symbols designed by the artist appeared in urban spaces, including Gdynia, where the Depeche Mode fans who were a separate subculture painted them on walls. Apart from cover photos, the exhibition will feature unknown photographs of stars like Iggy Pop, Kate Bush or R.E.M.

Apart from cover photos, the exhibition will feature unknown photographs of stars like Iggy Pop, Kate Bush or R.E.M. Brian Griffin’s work is a peculiar window to the past and a must see for every pop music fan or a person who is interested in the history of culture or photography. The exhibition was prepared together with the International Festival of Music Producers Soundedit. The event in Łódź is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

Curators: Jacek Friedrich, Michał Miegoń, Brian Griffin
Concept cooperation: Agata Abramowicz, Maciej Werk – International Festival of Music Producers Soundedit
Project team: Anna Lipińska, Mateusz Kozielecki, Robert Szymanowski, Rafał Frankowski, Tomasz Marcinkowski
Exhibition production: Omnidruk
Graphic design: Krzysztof Wroński Artwork
Cooperation and collection lending: International Festival of Music Producers Soundedit

Shortly after the end of the Second World War the former English Prime minister Winston Churchill held the famous Fulton-speech. He said: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” But the iron curtain he spoke about started far more north, into the Gulf of Finland.

I spent my childhood summers on the island of Gotland. On the beach I could find things that the sea had washed ashore: old shoes, bottles and parts of packagings with texts in strange languages as Polish or Latvian. Or in Russian with the curios letters. These traces of life from the other side seemed like incomprehensible messages coming from a world completely unknown to a Swedish child in 1960s.

In the Baltic Sea the iron curtain was an invisible and a mute border. But it that made contacts over the sea impossible for near fifty years. The exhibition “At the Water’s Edge” attempt to shape a meeting place for memories from the shores of the divided sea, from a time when we could not meet.
Partners around the Baltic Sea contributed with collected memories and photos. The photos are mostly amateur-photos and of course analogue. This is before the time when everyone can grasp the smartphone when something extraordinary happens. The black and white photos are sometimes similar, regardless whether they were taken on the Swedish island of Gotland or at the East-German beach. In the written recollections our different situations are more evident.
The exhibition has an everyday life perspective. It does not claim to be representative. Perhaps it should be understood as a question: What significance have these memories today when new threat scenarios are arising around the Baltic Sea?

Following institutions have contributed: the Cold War Museum Langelandsfort, the Maritime Museums in Rostock and Flensburg, the Gdynia City Museum, Antanas Mončys House Museum in Palanga, the Artist Group SERDE i Aizpute, the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory i Tallinn, the Nordic Institute on Åland (NIPÅ) and the Gotland Art Museum in Visby. I have learned a lot in dialogues with friends in the Baltic Sea countries and also by an art intervention at the Gotland Art Museum 2014.

From June 2017 until the end of summer 2018 the exhibit has been shown in places where the memories have been collected. The exhibition texts are available in all the nine Baltic Sea languages. The project is supported by the Council of Baltic Sea States (CBSS).
(Please share your own memories and your comments in the blue book in the exhibition or by Instagram: #atthewatersedgebalticsea)
Hanna Sjöberg

Hanna Sjöberg

czerwiec – wrzesień 2017 Visby, Szwecja
sierpień – październik 2017, Palanga, Litwa
wrzesień 2017 – styczeń 2018, Narva, Estonia
październik – listopad 2017, Rostock, Niemcy
styczeń – luty 2018, Åland, Finlandia
marzec – kwiecień 2018, Aizpute, Łotwa
kwiecień – czerwiec 2018, Flensburg, Niemcy
kwiecień – maj 2018, Bagenkop, Dania
lipiec – sierpień 2018, Gdynia, Polska

At the Water’s Edge / Za horyzontem
wernisaż: 13 lipca 2018, godz. 18:00
czas ekspozycji: 13.07-2.09.2018
miejsce ekspozycji: Muzeum Miasta Gdyni, sala audiowizualna
kurator: Hanna Sjöberg
koordynator: Anna Śliwa

Karol Śliwka. Polish Design Polish Designers

7.07-14.10.2018,

The Gdynia City Museum

Curators: Patryk Hardziej, Agata Abramowicz, Agnieszka Drączkowska

During the fifth exhibition in the Polish Design Polish Designers series, Gdynia City Museum presents the work of Karol Śliwka (b. 1932), an outstanding graphic designer, the creator of over 400 logos that have been a part of Polish everyday life for the past sixty years, shaping the iconosphere of the public space. This will be the largest monographic exhibition on Karol Śliwka to date, including designs, sketches, notes, photographs, pictures, and pieces from his private archive that have never before been made available to the public. Added to this, there will be works from institutions and museums from around the country, and pieces from private collections.

Karol Śliwka is a very multifaceted designer. His work has included packaging, book and record covers, stamps, and posters. Yet logos occupy a special place in his career, such as those created for the Institute of Mother and Child, General Director of Roads and Highways, the National Library, Adamed, and School and Educational Publishers. Some of these are presently considered cult classics – it would be hard to find someone in Poland who does not recognize the characteristic logo for PKO BP Bank.

Though many of Karol Śliwka’s designs are still part of the public sphere and the consciousness of many generations, as a designer he often remains anonymous. At this exhibition we are giving the floor to Karol Śliwka: quotes from conversations with the designer will guide us through the various stages of his life and work. The witty and nostalgic stories he tells give us a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a graphic designer and the various phases of his work, beginning with the People’s Republic era, moving through the transformation period, and finishing at the present day. We break down Śliwka’s most familiar logos, analyzing their various elements and recalling the stories and anecdotes behind them. We consider what makes a logo good, and what features make it recognizable. We use real objects from the designer’s studio to show the traditional craft of the graphic designer: tools, materials, and techniques that today, in our epoch of omnipresent technology, are slowly being forgotten. We wonder what inspires this graphic designer, whose work helped shape the everyday life of several generations, and if his work should be perceived in terms of craft or art. Finally, analyzing the work of an experienced designer with “principles,” we ask about the values a graphic design can hold.

„What can you see?” – answering such a question is not that easy. Everyone may see something different, though they look at the very same thing.

Looking at archive photographs of Gdynia is the theme of the exhibition: „What can you see?”
Come and look, which is an activity. We’ve arranged a number of situations in the museum, which make you look at photographs in different ways. Some of them require you to use your body – make a gesture or movement; other ones need you to free your imagination; there are some which encourage you to look at what seems obvious from a slightly different perspective. We offer you simple experiments that do not necessarily lead to results which have been planned in advance.

Gdynia City Museum’s photographic collection consists of over 40,000 photographs.
This collection is special for several reasons. Firstly, Gdynia which was given an urban charter in 1926 is the only major Polish town younger than the invention of photography. As a result, a large part of its history has been photographed.

Secondly, the opening of Gdynia’s temporary port in 1923 coincided with the production of Leica’s 135 film camera. It was a revolution in photography, thanks to its small size and technical capacity. When the new Gdynia was being built, documentary photography began to develop and private photography became commonly available.
What is more, Gdynia is believed to be a very photogenic city. Long, straight streets, modernist architecture, ships in the port, people on the beach and finally the horizon, which separates sky from the sea encourage you to photograph. The interwar period was the first chance to photograph the sea as a „Polish” one.

The way of looking is not something natural.
An eye, a natural organ and body part is for looking. However, what we see – notice or avoid looking at, is largely shaped by culture. Since we are children, we look at images (illustrations, prints, advertisements, films, photographs) which we learn to treat as obvious and unambiguous – we tend to pay more attention to what is presented in them than how they have been constructed. Photographs which are very common and, at the same time, often automatically treated as „objective” images of reality have an especially large influence on what we see and how we see it. They shape our idea of the world, also the past one.

For these reasons, photography is perfect for showing us the mechanism of the way we see things – making them non-transparent, see them as connected with culture and not natural, as constructed instead of neutral and relative instead of objective. Practising a „critical look” is about going beyond our own habits and looking at things from an angle, though we usually face them straight ahead. As a result, it improves „critical thinking” which consists in asking questions about what seems obvious and noticing the things that escape our attention. We hope that the experience of the exhibition „What can you see?” will let us not only look at photography in a different way, but also to see Gdynia and its history differently.

„What do you see?” is an exhibition with a question as its title – we assume that during the tour you can form your own observations and conclusions on looking at photography and interpreting it. A unique look at the archive photographs of Gdynia allows you to take a look at the past, too, to see the city’s present from a slightly different perspective.

Curator: Agnieszka Pajączkowska
Coordinator: Agata Abramowicz
Collaboration/Consultations: Agata Abramowicz, Anna Lipińska, Dariusz Małszycki, Tomasz Sosnowski, Weronika Szerle, Michał Miegoń
Exhibition layout: Grupa GDYBY
Graphic design: Anita Wasik

The exhibition „The land has spoken” is an outcome of archaeologic exploratory works which have been conducted since 2015 in the former Nazi concentration camp outside today’s Museum area.

KL Stutthof was the place where Poles and men, women and children of 28 other nationalities were exterminated for the longest time. In 1939-1941 4,800 of the inhabitants of Gdynia were recorded as victims of the Stutthof camp. As a result of torturous work, undernourishment, illnesses, assaults and shots, at least 429 of the Gdynia inmates died. The exhibition will present pieces found during the exploratory works. There are objects have been directly connected with the functioning of KL Stutthof and, above all, ones which have witnessed the lives of people and the crimes they have experienced.

Location: Gdynia City Museum
Date: 23^rd March – 30^th June 2018

The exhibition „Design Lesson” is the result of the previous activities of the Institute of Design in Kielce and a subjective review of Polish brands which design for children. It is also a perfect occasion to meet and confront the world of the youngsters ruled by unlimited imagination with the world of the designers which, above all, is ruled by logic.

Those whose products we are presenting at the exhibition usually are small, family or one-man businesses. Their members cultivate artisan traditions and pass their experience down from generation to generation, which translates into the products’ quality.

Parents themselves who are used to patterns often forget that they have an influence on shaping their children’s tastes and choices. By making conscious consumer’s choices and responsible decisions, they become role models for children.

To meet the needs of the parents, the Polish brands produce short series of hand-made objects. They are defined by care to detail and quality, which gives them an advantage over commercial products. The exhibition presents the offer of Polish designers – furniture, interior décor elements, decorations, books, toys and clothes. Therefore, the division
of the exposition into four parts: Reading Room, Playground, Young Fashion and Children’s Room.

Exhibition curators:
Joanna Kurkiewicz
Aleksandra Banaś

exhibition coordinator:
Weronika Szerle

Exhibition opening: 16th March, 18.00
Location: Gdynia City Museum, ul. Zawiszy Czarnego 1
The exhibition is open for visitors until 10th June 2018.

Tadeusz Wański was one of the leading representatives of Polish pictorialism. Born in 1894 in Sroda Wielkopolska, Wański became interested in photography only as an adult, reaching thirty. However, he quickly developed his above-average talent, already a year after the first photographic search began, gaining a bronze medal at the 1st All-Photographic Exhibition „Światłocień” in Poznań in 1923. In the following years, Wański was intensively and successfully exhibiting his works, not only in Poland, but also in France, the United States or Japan. He was also an active organizer of the photographic environment, the president of the Poznań Society of Photography Enthusiasts and a co-creator of the Polish Photoclub.
Artist previously associated with Poznan, in 1938 he lived in Gdynia, where he lived until his death in 1958, in addition to photography, he also dealt with running a coffee and tea trading company founded by him. At the time, he created many beautiful paintings of Gdynia, Gdańsk and Sopot, but above all he photographed the surrounding landscapes. As Jerzy’s son, Jerzy, Tadeusz Wański’s favorite plein is mentioned, there were moraine hills near Gdynia’s Forest Plots and Grabówka. The landscape was in general the mainstream of his work, and he was looking for picturesque motifs not only in Poland, but also in Yugoslavia, to which he traveled in the 1930s, a beautiful record being the cycle presented at our exhibition.

This is the second monographic exhibition of the work of an outstanding photographer at the Museum of the City of Gdynia and probably not the last one. Tadeusz Wański is undoubtedly one of the most important artists associated with Gdynia in the 20th century. At the exhibition, we present over 40 atmospheric photographs from family collections belonging to the son of the artist Jerzy Wański.

Vernissage: Friday, 1 December 2017, 6:00 PM
The duration of the exhibition: December 2, 2017 – March 4, 2018.
Place: Museum of the City of Gdynia, ul. Zawiszy Czarnego 1, Gdynia
Admission to the opening of the exhibition is free.

At the exhibition FEEL MODERNISM, we presented two selected photos of each class participant.
We could also learn these photographs by listening to audiodescription, that is, a verbal description of visual content that we have made available on audio players.

The final of the project „Turn Museum!”: 27 October 2017 – 17:00
Exposure time „Feel modernism”: 27/10/12/11
Place: Museum of the City of Gdynia, ul. Zawiszy Czarnego 1
Tickets: free entry

„Turn on the Museum!” Is a project that, through a coherent program, included people with visual and hearing disabilities in various activities of the institution and encouraged creative experience of culture.

By implementing the project „Turn on the Museum!” We wanted to integrate new audiences and create a cultural offer without barriers. For this purpose, we also developed the competences of the employees of the Museum of the City of Gdynia, who took part in the training on working with people with disabilities.

From August 2017, we invited to the Museum of the City of Gdynia for events related to the subject of three exhibitions presented in 2017:

1. exhibition „Oskar Zięta” as part of the Polish Designs Polish Designers cycle (duration of the exhibition: July 1 – November 12, 2017)
2. „Roundabout Baltic” exhibition (duration of the exhibition: July 1 – September 3, 2017)
3. permanent exhibition „Gdynia – open work” (opened on February 10, 2017).

Through guided tours of variously arranged exhibitions, workshops and meetings, we let us touch, hear, feel and see the best Polish design, archival photographs or monuments of Gdynia’s modernism.

As a result, we have prepared an exhibition of „Feel Modernism”, through which we presented the creative potential and skills of people with disabilities and their perception of Gdynia’s modernism.

In 1517, the Augustinian monk – Martin Luther – appeared in Wittenberg against the abuses associated with the sale of indulgences. This protest, formulated in the form of 95 theses, led to the creation of a separate current in the Christian religion. Protestants in the world today constitute over 800 million believers – and after Catholics they are the largest group of Christians.

Soon after Luther’s speech, his ideas and in Pomerania found many supporters. Even 150 years ago, every fifth inhabitant of the area on which Gdynia is today was an Evangelical denomination.

500 years after the events in Wittenberg, we would like to remind you about the heritage of Protestants in Gdynia and its surroundings: the parish life of Lutherans in Little Kack, the evangelical colonists from Góra Donas and the Polish Evangelical-Augsburg Order from the interwar period. The story in the form of an exhibition about Gdynia’s evangelicals is not only a pretext to get to know the Protestant churches and the principles of their faith. It is also a source of reflection on our memory and oblivion about the members of these churches who for centuries lived, prayed and worked.

VERNISAGE: 10/11/2017, at 18:00
DURATION OF THE EXHIBITION: 10/11/2017 – 25/02/2018
PLACE: Museum of the City of Gdynia, ul. Zawiszy Czarnego 1, Gdynia
CURATOR: Dr. Andrzej Hoja

The Museum of the City of Gdynia invites you from September 18 to the exhibition Andrzej Pągowski. Movie posters. 40 years of creative work.
The exhibition of the Museum of Cinematography in Łódź is presented in the Museum of the City of Gdynia during the 42nd Polish Film Festival in Gdynia.

Andrzej Pągowski is one of the most recognizable creators of the poster in Poland. In 2017, the artist celebrates the 40th anniversary of creative work. On this occasion, the Museum of Cinematography in Łódź prepared an exhibition of film posters of his authorship.

The poster – according to the artist – is the shortest review of the film. It should be an extension of the atmosphere of the film, should carry a similar message, bringing out the most irritating elements. The poster can work with ugliness or beauty, but it must be noticeable. Poster not noticed is lost.

Andrzej Pągowski has over 1,300 posters, including over 400 films.
I know that I like one of my posters, others are upset. But that is the dream of every artist. Create something that is noticeable – says the artist

Andrzej Pągowski has worked with leading Polish and foreign directors. Among the presented works are, among others posters for films by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland, Roman Polański, Janusz Majewski, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Miloš Forman, and Robert Altman.
The exhibition will feature the oldest posters starting with „Amator” – a poster for the film by Krzysztof Kieślowski, „Hair” by Miloš Forman to the latest, including Andrzej Wajda’s „Afterimages” designed in 2016.
All posters were chosen by the artist.
The exhibition from September 18 to September 30, 2017 can be seen in the Museum of the City of Gdynia. The exhibition is presented as part of the 42nd edition of the Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdynia.

Andrzej Pągowski.
Born in 1953.
A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, Faculty of Graphic Arts, diploma under prof. Waldemar Świerzy. He is the author of over 1,300 posters issued in print since 1977 in Poland and abroad. In addition, he is involved in book and press illustration, is the author of covers of record labels, theater and television sets, film scripts and music videos. He practices painting.
From 1986, he was the artistic and graphic director of many magazines, the longest Polish edition of the „Playboy” monthly.
In 1989 he started working in advertising, without interrupting individual graphic art.
He presented his works at numerous individual exhibitions at home and abroad. He is also a laureate of several dozen Polish and foreign awards, including several top trophies at the International Poster for Best Film and Television Posters in Los Angeles and several prizes at the Chicago International Film Festival. His works are in the most famous museums in the world, including in MoMA in New York and San Francisco, Center Pompidou in Paris, Museum of Art in Tokyo. The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art has placed the poster „The Wolf’s Smile” among the 100 most important works of modern art in the collection of MoMA.

Andrzej Pągowski. Movie posters. 40 years of creative work
exhibition of the Museum of Cinematography in Łódź presented at the Museum of the City of Gdynia during the 42nd Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdynia

19/09/2017, at 18:00 – opening
18/09/2017 – 30/09/2017 – duration of the exhibition
24/09/2017, at 14:00 – lecture by prof. Krzysztof Kornacki

Museum of the City of Gdynia, ul. Zawiszy Czarnego 1, Gdynia