Lela Pawlikowska. Drawings

From 16 to 23 November, the Sukiennice will hold a small exhibition presenting thirty works by Aniela (Lela) Pawlikowska.

Lela Wolska came from an interesting Lviv family – she was the daughter of poet Maryla Wolska, granddaughter of Wanda Monné (a fiancée and muse of Artur Grottger) and sister of another poet – Beata Obertyńska. She married Michał Pawlikowski, a writer and publisher, for whose father Stanisław Witkiewicz designed Villa 'Pod Jedlami'. It was her husband that encouraged Aniela to develop her talent and take up art studies (as an auditing student) at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. In 1925, the Pawlikowskis founded the 'Medyka Library' where Aniela watched over the artistic aspect of the publications, and often adorned them with her drawings. In the 1930s, she gained popularity by displaying her works at numerous exhibitions, and during and after the Second World War, Lela's talent allowed her to support her entire family while living abroad in exile.

In the 1950s Lela Pawlikowska became one of the most popular portraitists in Great Britain. She died in 1980 in London.

In the autumn of 2005, the Jagiellonian Library in Krakow held an exhibition titled 'Lady from Medyka and London. Lela Pawlikowska 1901-1980. Painting', which presented Aniela Pawlikowska's art. The display constituted the first Krakow exhibition of the artist's works, which had been showcased earlier in Zakopane and Przemyśl.

In 1997, the National Museum in Krakow received a donation from Kasper Pawlikowski, the artist's son living in Kanada, containing a collection of 150 drawings and paintings, as well as 153 sketchbooks. On the basis of this collection, in the autumn of 1997, the National Museum in Krakow organized an exhibition in the Kulczycki Gallery in Koziniec in Zakopane, which was the first post-war display of the artist's works in Poland. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue titled 'Lela Pawlikowska's World', compiled by Marta Romanowska, an NMK curator, with a foreword by Prof. Jacek Woźniakowski, who shared loving memories of his aunt. The exhibition was presented a year later in Przemyśl, and another display of Pawlikowska's twenty-eight works connected with Medyka was shown there again in 2002.

Exhibition curator: Magdalena Czubińska
Exhibition layout: Magdalena Bujak