Antoni Starczewski. Wall of Light

Antoni Starczewski was involved in painting, textiles, graphics, ceramics, and reliefs. As early as 1951, he began working as an artist-designer in the light industry at the Fajans and Porcelain Factory in Włocławek. Since then, ceramics, ranging from small sculptures, plates, and vases to reliefs and objects (the famous Potato Tables, and later also with rolls, long rolls, carrots, and apples), have been constantly present in his work. Among his most famous decorative walls are: the relief for the hall of the Library of the University of Łódź (existing) and two compositions for the Jaracz Theater (now no longer in situ).

The Wall of Light, made of specially prepared ceramic sconces, was officially presented to the public on January 27, 1970, in the foyer of the reconstructed Stefan Jaracz Theater. Its preparation process was quite tedious and stretched over time. From designing the wall layout with the architect, through intensive work in Włocławek, where the artist spent a lot of time searching for the best glazing for the faience sconces, and earlier constructing them, to the extremely absorbing installation assembly on site, at the Jaracz Theater, where he was assisted by his students, such as Mariusz Kowalski.

The Wall of Light, which can be seen from December 20, 2023, this time in the foyer of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (ms1), is an attempt to reconstruct the first version of Antoni Starczewski's work. The Museum acquired this composition for its collection as an intervention in 2003, when the Jaracz Theater was being modernized. During its removal from the walls, it was neither inventoried in detail nor conserved, and consequently, it was not properly examined. Stored in fifteen crates, it waited twenty years to be rediscovered and brought to light from the Museum's collection. Due to the fragility of the material, many of its elements were destroyed or damaged during the first disassembly. On the other hand, the sketches left by the artist are very rough and sometimes not very specific, so "deciphering" his intentions years later became difficult.

The composition of the Wall of Light is based on the use of repeatable modules, which are arranged in columns corresponding to successive letters of the alphabet. Each letter is characterized by a different arrangement of dots and dashes, repeated in each element of a given column. The first eight columns are letters A – H, which the artist called the "static part". The next nine columns, letters I – R, are the "textured part", and the last letters S – Z are the "dynamic part". In the original wall, covering an area of 40 m2, each column contained 56 individual rectangular ceramic "bricks" with openings, so-called sconces. Unfortunately, the condition of the preserved ceramics did not allow for the reconstruction of all of them. However, as long as the series of sconces corresponding to the letters is preserved, reducing the height of the wall does not affect the perception of the artist's intention. In the Jaracz Theater, each column was also topped with a triangular form. After the wall was dismantled, only twelve of them survived, which made it impossible to include them in the reconstruction. An integral part of the composition is the lighting, mounted inside individual bricks to create sophisticated light reflections.

The narrative and rhythmic character of the constructed structures, focused as if through a lens in this installation, determined Starczewski's artistic idiom, who, "seeking universal principles in art, unexpectedly combined the systemic and orderly character of works with creative values and emotional diversity."

Natalia Słaboń, Paulina Kurc-Maj

Thanks go to Grzegorz Musiał, a former employee of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, co-founder of Galeria 86, and an expert on Antoni Starczewski's work. His help and materials proved invaluable in the reconstruction process of the Wall of Light.

Antoni Starczewski (1929–2000) – born and died in Łódź. Sculptor, painter, graphic artist, and ceramist. Son of Alina née Aniołowicz, a teacher of deaf and mute children, and Franciszek, a teacher. A graduate of the Żeromski school in Łódź. During the war, he collaborated with the Home Army, arrested by the Germans. In 1946, he began studies at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Łódź, together with, among others, Stanisław Fijałkowski, under the direction of Władysław Strzemiński. He studied painting, graphics, ceramics, and sculpture in the interior architecture department. He received his diploma in 1951. From the mid-1950s, he worked at his alma mater as a teacher. He obtained the title of associate professor in 1982. In his work, he used various forms of expression, using, for example, weaving, writing, ceramic forms, and sound. From 1963, he began to apply a characteristic system in his works consisting of elements that multiply shapes, thus imitating the rhythmic diversity of forms found in nature. He was interested in the concept of module, and alphabet. He was an often-awarded artist, achieving numerous successes in international competitions, including a gold medal at the XXIV Concorso Internazionale della Ceramica in Faenza (1966), a gold medal at the III Biennale Internazionale della Grafica in Florence (1972), and the second prize at the VI International Print Biennial in Krakow (1976). The collection of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź contains nearly sixty prints, reliefs, objects, drawings, and paintings by the artist.

Maciej Cholewiński