Adam Marczyński. Lyricism and Form

The presentation of more than 60 works from the collections of the National Museum in Krakow and the Museum of Art in Łódź aims to highlight the moment at which the artistic credo of Adam Marczyński was taking form, where the caesura is the 1940s to the mid-1960s. The exhibition examines the post-war output of the artist, who in his later years became interested in geometric abstraction. It is an excellent opportunity to juxtapose the artist’s painted works with the subtle, even poetic drawings and outstanding monotypes. The story ends with works associated with the geometric abstraction movement. Marczyński’s art.

From this period is primarily defined by colour and form, its two main constituents. It is these two aspects which indicate the thinking of the artist with regards to art. And to a cosmic-botanical world.  Nature, which in may of his works from this period takes on quite unusual forms, is expressed in various dependencies and relationships. The artis continually “played” with nature, deepening his relationship with it, repeating motifs, intensifying its hues or restricting it to a mere outline. 

The exhibition is an excellent demonstration of the fact that the multifaceted work of Adam Marczyński is well worth returning to, and is also an opportunity to reflect on the golden years of the Polish avantgarde, which, driven by an immanent need for experiment and aesthetic refinement aimed for a creative contact with the viewer, more often than not drawn into the process of the function of the work of art itself.

Adam Marczyński, painter and graphic artist, born 24 December 1908 in Kraków, died in his home town in 1985. In the years 1930-1936, he studied at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of Professor Władysław Jarocki and Ignacy Pieńkowski. For several decades, (1945-1979), Marczyński worked as an teacher at his alma mater, educating subsequent generations of artists.

Even before the war, Marczyński was involved with the avantgarde as well as being socially committed and associated with the Kraków Group in its first incarnation. After the war. Together with Maria Jarema and Jonasz Stern, he was a co-founder of the reactivated Kraków Group II in 1957.

Curator: Anna Budzałek
Coordinator: Katarzyna Myszor
Arrangement designer: Dr. Paulina Zwolak-Nowak