Page 64 - Studio International - October 1966

society. Once recognized, he is given full and generous tachisme, art brut and Abstract Expressionism. Artists like
support by the State on a scale remarkable by British Jan Lebenstein, Danuta, and J onasz Stern each exploit in
standards. In a country where housing shortages are various ways paint quality, texture and the improvis­
acute, many artists are provided with living and studio atory gesture derived from French models, but in the
accommodation, almost always in flats reserved for majority of cases their works lacks conviction and there is
artists, actors, and intellectuals. no personal voice to compensate for what often seem to
Events in Elblag, the industrial city north-east of War­ be the results of a superficial understanding of the method
saw, show what can happen when artist and State work and what the method implies. It is as though these
in close collaboration. Elblag was severely damaged dur­ artists feel the need to be international at all costs, to
ing the last war and has been rebuilt by some of the most value the foreign all the more because close contact with
advanced and enlightened architects and town-planners it is difficult.
in the country. In 1950 a sculpture competition was Where the artist seems to be true to himself he is either
organized and made open to about fifty of Poland's lead­ working in terms of firmly based national traditions (like
ing artists. Most of the competition models were accepted most of the more successful graphic artists) or else he is
and were produced on a monumental scale by workers tapping veins of sensibility which are entirely Polish.
under the artists' supervision in factories in Elblag. As Wladislaw Hasior's assemblages and collage-objects are
there was unemployment at the time, the entire project bizarre and dramatic and seem to be the result of a type
not only found work for the factories and men but also of surrealist imagination almost peculiar to central Europe.
created a public sculpture gallery for the city and a The Polish constructivist school falls into the same cate­
model environment which other cities might do well to gory. Although an artist like Sta:i:ewski was influenced to
emulate. Situated throughout Elblag, in parks, along the an enormous extent by, for example, Malevich and
streets and in squares, the sculptures are of an astonish­ Mondrian, his own art was deeply personal and original,
ingly high quality and relate at every point to the build­ and the Polish type of Constructivism which emerged
ings around them. from his beginnings was quite unlike versions of it else­
The artist, however, remains isolated from events where. Gostomski, the painter and sculptor, who is one
abroad. In spite of this he is surprisingly well-informed, of the most interesting of the younger Polish artists,
and the painter Kantor, who runs the artists' co-operative works very much in the constructivist tradition even
in Cracow, has staged 'Happenings' there. These stimu­ though his paintings experiment with light and colour in
lated enormous interest and have become in Cracow, as a deceptively simple way.
in Prague, symbols certainly for an envied 'outside' The adherence of most artists in Poland to a pattern of
way of life if not for that complete freedom of expression development which they see abroad does at least show a
which is ultimately sought by most artists in Poland. willingness to keep in step by absorbing the common
Knowledge of, but insulation from, developments in jargon, but it is impossible to deny history. Polish art is at
art abroad have produced an interesting situation, parti­ its most original when its artists are true to themselves
cularly in Polish painting. There are many Polish artists and do not attempt to come to terms with events else­
who are still producing work with strong links with where for the wrong reasons. O

Daniel Vazquez Diaz (born
1882) the Spanish painter, a
friend of Gris, Picasso and
Modigliani in Paris in the
early 1900s, was recently
given a retrospective in the
gallery of the Hostal de los
Reyes Catolicos in Santiago
de Compostela. The gallery,
which is the de-consecrated
chapel of the Pilgrim
Hospital built by Ferdinand
and Isabella, was an
admirable setting for these
austere works, mediaeval
and intensely Spanish in
feeling. The exhibition was
arranged by Edmund Peel,
a co-director of the Broadway
Art Gallery, Worcestershire.
Centre, Portrait of Modigliani,
painted in Paris in 1906, and
right, The White Monks.

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