Wyspiański. Display of a drawing by Stanisław Wyspiański from Zygmunt Hendel’s collection

The Stanisław Wyspiański Museum, a branch of the National Museum in Krakow, is located in the Old Granary, a building erected in the 18th century, which in the past has served as a granary, factory, shop, and headquarters of the Association of Polish Architects.

The Wyspiański Museum presents almost 150 works by the artist, the vast majority of which are pastel works on paper. This is a technique sensitive to both microclimate and pollution, and it is affected by light. For this reason, in order to ensure the safety of the collections, the exhibition is subject to cyclical changes.

On the ground floor, you can see Wyspiański’s own portraits, supplemented by images of his closest family - his wife and children, as well as portraits of friends, patrons and close acquaintances. The space is complemented by views of Krakow: landscapes created from the window of the apartment on Krowoderska Street and the insides of the streets of his hometown.

On the first floor, you can admire the artist’s works, which refer to three main threads in his creative activity. Hence, the exhibition sections are named: Elements, Wawel – drama of kings and Apollo-Christ. The stained glass design God the Father and cardboards for the painted decoration of the Franciscan church in Krakow, the model of Acropolis, stained glass designs for the Wawel Cathedral, proposals for decorations, furniture and fabrics for the building of the Krakow Medical Society indicate the multifaceted nature of the artist’s creative activities, from painting, through applied art, to architecture.

In the basement of the building, in the My Books room, there is an exhibit of, among other things, Stanisław Wyspiański’s book collection, with his handwritten notes and first editions of his dramas, as well as works by other authors, for which the artist made covers and illustrations. Next to it, in the Metamorphosis space, you can see theatrical items: posters for the staging of Wyspiański’s plays, selected photos and fragments of films from the most famous stagings and film adaptations of the artist’s literary works. You can also watch a short VR video dedicated to Stanisław Wyspiański.

The current edition of the exhibition has been enriched with a presentation of a drawing by Stanisław Wyspiański, Side of the stall from the Church of the Holy Cross in Krakow, purchased for the collections of the National Museum in Krakow. This work was created in 1896, during the renovation of the Church of the Holy Cross in Krakow (between 1896-1898). At the request of the architects conducting conservation work on this temple, Tadeusz Stryjeński and Zygmunt Hendel, Wyspiański prepared tracings of the polychrome and the church fittings. The painter used the drawing of the side part of the back of the stall to illustrate his texts. The article entitled The Holy Cross was published in “Życie” on 6 November 1897, while the text entitled Old polychrome of the Church of the Holy Cross in Krakow was published in “Rocznik Krakowski” Vol. 1 of 1898. The artist also used the illustration of the stall in a work he wrote together with Lucjan Rydel entitled Epilogue of the ceremonial performance at the Krakow Theatre on June 27, 1898 in honour of Adam Mickiewicz.