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Abstract
The community grouped around the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw played a pivotal role in the new perception of fiber art around the world. This discipline of art grew in popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. The first generation of post-war students, which included Magdalena Abakanowicz, Wojciech Sadley, Jolanta Owidzka, Maria Chojnacka, and Barbara Levittoux-Świderska, and which had the support of excellent educators, enjoyed spectacular international success, thereby changing the attitudes to fiber art.
Two great professors of ASP, Mieczysław Szymański and Eleonora Plutyńska, who were instrumental to the international success of Polish fiber art in the first half of the 20th century, were ASP graduates. They each represented a different personality and a different approach to textiles, and each focused on the development of different skills in students. While their workshops followed different curricula, the combination of their different artistic and teaching attitudes laid the foundation of the subsequent success.
As chance would have it, these two prominent and yet so different artistic personalities crossed paths at the Academy in a difficult and yet seminal era. Two charismatic figures, drawing upon wisdom encapsulated in tradition, enriched with ideas of their contemporary period, transmitted their passion and a new vision of a previously moribund discipline to dozens of students. The merger of the two different approaches to reviving fiber art combined with the enthusiasm and creativity of a young generation of students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw made the new vision of artistic textiles inspiring to artists around the world. Thanks to a broad spectrum of discovered possibilities, the medium shed its merely utilitarian function and joined the liberated arts.
Notes
Notes
1 The translator of this article was Agnieszka Grochulska.
2 In later years, Textile was taught at the Painting Department, although the Textile Curriculum was restored in 1960–1964.
3 The group includes Professor Anna Śledziewska, who was a very successful educator; however, it was Plutyńska and Szymański who conceived the new approach to textile art.
4 A time-long technique which survived in the Polish folk weaving tradition and had been used in ancient Mexico, Peru, and Scandinavia.
5 The name “Ład” was derived both from the word “ład” (harmony) and “ładnie” (beautiful).
6 At the time, traditional folk weaving workshops increasingly applied industrial designs to manually woven textiles.
7 Cepelia stayed in business, in a different form, until 1996.
8 “Kalendarium życia i twórczości Mieczysława Szymańskiego” [Chronology of Mieczysław Szymański’s Life and Work] in materials for an unpublished catalogue of his individual exhibition, Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts, 22 April–29 May 1988, manuscript, Archive of the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts. This account of Szymański’ s life is based on those documents.
9 “W ASP znalazłem się przez znajomość z Bohdanem Pniewskim….,” Wojciech Włodarczyk talks to Mieczysław Szymański, p. 13, materials for an unpublished catalog of Szymański’s individual exhibition, Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts, 22 April–29 May 1988, manuscript, Archive of the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts.
10 Materials for the Museum of Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Warsaw.
11 Wojciech Włodarczyk talks to Zbigniew Gostomski, 14 January 1988, p. 15, materials for an unpublished catalog of Szymański’s individual exhibition, Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts, 22 April–29 May 1988, manuscript, Archive of the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts.
12 “Studium kobierca (Gobelinu) na Wydziale Malarstwa Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie, Specjalizacja,” materials for an unpublished catalogue of Szymański’s individual exhibition, Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts, 22 April–29 May 1988, manuscript, Archive of the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts.
13 “Studium kobierca (Gobelinu) na Wydziale Malarstwa Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie, Specjalizacja,” materials for an unpublished catalogue of Szymański’s individual exhibition, Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts, 22 April–29 May 1988, manuscript, Archive of the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts.
14 Wojciech Włodarczyk talks to Zbigniew Gostomski, 14 January 1988, p. 15, materials for an unpublished catalog of Szymański’s individual exhibition, Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts, 22 April–29 May 1988, manuscript, Archive of the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts.
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Notes on contributors
Marta Kowalewska
Marta Kowalewska is an art historian, curator for contemporary art exhibitions, academic teacher, and Chief Curator in Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź. She is co-editor of various publications and contributor to the book From Tapestry to Fiber Art: The Lausanne Biennials 1962–1995. She has authored numerous critical texts published in professional magazines and catalogs of exhibitions and a series of interviews with prominent Polish artists. She was curator of exhibitions in CMWL inter alia “Rebellion of the matter” (on 15 editions of International Textile Triennial), Metamorphism—Magdalena Abakanowicz solo show and exhibitions in the Academy of Art Łódź. She was also an academic consultant to the exhibition “Splendor of Textile” in the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw (and co-editor of the catalogs). She is a curator of the 16th International Triennial of Tapestry in Łódź 2019.