Olga Boznańska and… Polish Painting of the 19th and Early 20th Century from the Collection of the National Museum in Gdańsk

The National Museum in Gdańsk is combing through its storerooms and bringing out works that our audience has not seen for a long time, gathered in the collection over decades. We wish to show them within the series “Collection”, a run of temporary exhibitions held in our various branches. This time we have the great pleasure of presenting a priceless body of paintings from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries from the collection of the Museum’s Department of Modern Art, Abbots’ Palace in Oliwa.

The Museum holds a small yet artistically remarkable collection of Polish painting from the 19th and early 20th centuries, which came here as a result of geopolitical change. Only after 1945 did the National Museum in Gdańsk (then the Pomeranian Museum) begin to gather paintings by Polish artists. The first works were gifts from the Ministry of Culture and Art, and these efforts had an ideological basis: the aim was to create an image of Gdańsk as a Polish city. In this way a new identity for the city was built, somewhat secondarily supplementing its museum holdings with the achievements of native women and men artists. What above all unites this collection are the well-known and eagerly viewed works of the most important national painters.

The direct impulse for presenting this collection is also the fact that Olga Boznańska is the Patron of 2025. Our collections could not be without paintings by one of the most important representatives of portraiture and modernism. It is precisely the figure of this outstanding artist and her work that became the direct inspiration for our story about Polish painting at the turn of the century.

The exhibition focuses on the output of artists who have firmly entered the canon of national art. The works gathered in the Gdańsk Museum represent a broad spectrum of styles and currents, from Romanticism through realism and symbolism to Young Poland, showing the richness and diversity of art of this period. Each work on display is not only a masterpiece in itself but also a testimony to an era that abounded in social, cultural and artistic change.

At the exhibition you can admire works by such artists as the aforementioned Olga Boznańska, whose portraits still fascinate with their psychological depth, and Piotr Michałowski, author of battle scenes and dynamic equestrian portraits, the quintessence of Romantic painting. Masterful symbolism can be found in the paintings of Jacek Malczewski. Canvases by Stanisław Wyspiański, distinguished by an unrivalled, dynamic line, are also shown, as well as works by enthusiasts of intense colour fields: Józef Pankiewicz, Julian Fałat, Władysław Ślewiński and Wojciech Weiss.

The display is enriched by unique photographs from the early 20th century, from the collections of the Gdańska Galeria Fotografii. The works of Jan Bułhak, one of the pioneers of Polish artistic photography, Stanisław Filiberta Fleury’ego and Tadeusza Rzący do not merely document a bygone era but are themselves works of art. Their presence allows a deeper understanding of the visual context of the times in which the presented painting was created.

The whole exhibition is closed by a narrative frame in the form of video art* and paintings by Katarzyna Swinarska, which deliberately enter into dialogue with the figure of Olga Boznańska. They create a fascinating perspective that invites reflection on the timelessness of art.

You can visit the exhibition using the audio guide available in the mobile app.

Simply download the app appaudioguide.com/mngshareapp