Hunger for Freedom. The Radom Revolt. June 1976

On the 50th anniversary of the Radom June '76 events, the exhibition recalls the road to freedom, solidarity and civic resistance to injustice. Through the works of more than forty artists, it explores the particular role of Polish art in the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s. It addresses everyday life in Poland at the time and the place of the individual within the structures of an enslaved state, the need for freedom, democracy and civil liberties, truth and justice, and sensitivity to the fate of one's neighbour.

Fifty years ago, after a drastic increase in food prices introduced by the authorities of the PZPR, workers from Radom, Płock and Ursus began strikes. These events opened a new chapter in the history of the People's Republic of Poland. It was also a turning point in the struggle for freedom, equal rights and independence. The Radom June '76 became an impulse for the development of the opposition and of various forms of civic resistance, both within official structures and underground (the Radom events were, among other things, the direct cause of the founding of the Workers' Defence Committee, KOR).

The exhibition attempts to analyse the cultural and artistic consequences of the protests, with particular attention to creative practices operating outside the official institutional system. The works presented reveal the experience of the individual under conditions of limited freedom, the mechanisms of symbolic resistance, and strategies of visual commentary on socio-political reality. The display shows the experience of the enslaved person: grey everyday life, loneliness and distrust of power. The exhibition space is filled with paintings, graphics, posters, sculptures, illustrations, and covers of the first underground publications by artists of different generations.

The exhibits come from artists' studios, the collections of the National Museum in Lublin, Zachęta – Narodowa Galeria Sztuki in Warsaw, the collections of Danuta Borucka-Brukwicka and Jerzy Brukwicki, and the own collections of Muzeum im. Jacka Malczewskiego in Radom.

Curators of the exhibition: Damian Jendrzejczyk and Jerzy Brukwicki.