Stanisław Zamecznik
National Photography Exhibition, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1962.
0047 and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw have jointly initiated a research and exhibition project on the work of a forgotten architect, exhibition designer, and pioneer of environment art – Stanisław Zamecznik (1909-1971).
Zamecznik belonged to a generation of architects who studied and debuted before World War II, but his career reached its height during the People’s Poland era, when architectural practice had a different shape than at any other time in history, and centralised political-administrative structures closely controlled the building design and construction process. Zamecznik worked with some of the most important figures of his time, such as Oskar Hansen, Jerzy Sołtan or Lech Tomaszewski. Although few of their architectural designs were actually implemented, these architects were able to fulfil themselves in other, interdisciplinary, architecture-related fields.
Exhibition design was an important area of those experiments. The modernist exhibitions designed by Zamecznik and his peers in the 1960s soothed their grief at the unrealised cities of the future. The cardboard and plywood exhibition architecture substituted for the realisation of the brave urban planning visions filling the architects’ sketchbooks and was often the only materialisation of their visionary ideas. Exhibitions designed byStanisław Zamecznik, who called his profession the ‘art of space,’ were unique in this regard. As Mary Anne Staniszewski, author of The Power Display (1998) stresses, the role of exhibitions in art history is a subject that has not been given enough attention. Exhibitions often affect the history of individual works of art and their subsequent interpretation.
The project will result in the realisation of two exhibitions: in Oslo, at 0047, and in Warsaw, at the Museum of Modern Art. The collaboration of these two institutions will make it possible to study Stanisław Zamecznik’s work in two countries at once: in Norway, where the Zamecznik family’s archive has been since 1973, and in Poland, where the artist worked until his death in 1971. The planned inter-institutional project provides for the publication of a bilingual book devoted to Zamecznik’s work and the organisation of an academic conference in Warsaw.
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Stanisław Zamecznik: From My Diary
All the time, at every moment, every day, in the morning and in the evening, in summer, in winter, in the rain, in early life, in old age and in other periods, walking, talking, standing, sitting in a coffee-house, on the porch, in school, on the train, on the stairs and elsewhere – every day, all the time, at every moment one has to start everything from the very beginning. It’s tiring. Awful. But this – and only this – makes our end more distant.
If nothing proves exactly correct – what can it mean? Either the impressions aren’t obedient to our dreams – which would be a rather simple thing: dreams are helpless. This is a generally accepted view. Or its strength causes deceitful action whose mechanisms are not sufficiently known to us. After all, dreams rule the world, which is easy to notice around. If something is decaying and is destroyed as a result of ill will: war, savagery, rowdyism, our protest comes in a more violent form than when exactly the same occurs because of negligence, etc. How does it happen? Let’s wash all the eyes, ears, brains, characters. Let’s save Poland. But does it make sense to begin with buttons? As a matter of fact, it’s buttons that are at stake.
Some people should be allowed to produce, and other people should be allowed to buy whatever they like if only these actions are convenient to both sides. Some people used to buy paintings of the deer on the rutting ground for the need of possession, other people – from a perverse sentiment. And still other people combated them with indignation. Everything was fine, business was brisk, the deer were making a living out of it – and they have been doing so ever since. They have become a symbol, and if one chooses to, one can make it a problem on a large scale. The community is always late. The so-called geniuses and prophets propose only a picture of contemporaneity more similar to the present moment, and nothing more. But the people want to live in peace among the habits they have acquired and sometimes have dearly paid for. The people want to live among the things already seen, generally accepted, of a definite (in their opinion) value. And these values have been determined on the road of various adventures and happenings, in various climates and sociological groups. Do they result from a social order? The products made to a social order can serve for putting diagnoses, determining the character and social consciousness of the environment. Like from coffee grounds. From that which remains on the bottom. It’s not important that I don’t like it, that it even turns me off. All the worse for me.
Cultural models cannot be formed artificially, produced to order. “Modernity”, or the contemporary model, has a terribly blurred contour. Under such circumstances, clarity is scarce and gibberish is frequent. The Scandinavians have developed a fine model based on industry, the Mexicans – a model based on folk tradition. Perhaps we, too, could develop a more sensible model than the petit-bourgeois scrap-heap, treated in earnest, with adoration and affection. But as long as the people continue to buy – it means that it’s necessary.
One can risk: the truest is that which appears in a given region in the field of art. Unofficial, uncontrolled, done on slack principles, not tailored to foreign patterns, almost like a test of the true image of subconsciousness, the lower layers, the essence of the art of the nation. The products of art have always appeared as auguries, letters from human groups. Unfalsified flowers.
I am unable to determine sufficiently clear how far the term “artist” is a definition of a profession, or whether it belongs exclusively to the domain of art. If I could define this precisely, I would have a much clearer view of the methods of teaching in the school which has the words “Fine Art” in its name. Generally speaking, each school is to convey from one generation to another the total of knowledge and technical experience gained so far, leaving a margin for development transformations. However, there exists one great unknown: the way of using this experience, difficult to foresee, and in the cases of great discoveries (particularly interesting in art), hostile to the predecessors. This is impossible to teach. Contrariness and the depreciation of the achieved methods would pose great danger if the rebellion against tradition did not put us on our own track achieved with difficulty, if it did not lead us to our own – and, therefore, more wonderful – fields of activity.
When I think of the school, I see the urgent need to improve the transmission of the knowledge of all technical means being at the disposal of a graphic artist in the discipline which he practices. All the means inherited from tradition, as well as those developed be modern technology – the infant prodigy of our times. It is necessary to catch up – in the field of culture – with the dazzling discoveries of technical civilization as soon as possible. For example, the secrets and mysteries of electronic technology exert fascinating influence on imagination. Its efficiency in everyday life intimidates us, and will continue to intimidate us until it becomes common property. Although we are rapidly becoming acquainted with it, it still remains far above us.
I think that it is also necessary to impart knowledge of the new and new, and more efficient technical materials. To create the hunger for their use in a manner proper to them. So that the fascination with the new materials and new techniques does not resemble a savage man who turns the fetish of problems unconceivable to him into children’s toys or puts it in his own, embarrassingly naive parenthesis.
It is necessary to strive for introducing the discipline of thinking. The rediscovery of the world surrounding us requires a fixed and elaborately defined attitude towards phenomena, their sources and consequences. Without mastering technical knowledge and without an efficient apparatus of thinking – intuition and inspiration is good for nothing.
How frequently it happens that, while talking with the students, I find myself in a garden of nithered clichés, conceptual weeds, a scrap-heap, never cleaned out, of different parts of thinking, derived from unknown sources, not fitting one another. It is necessary to clean and arrange them.
It is difficult to foresee the results of pedagogical activity. In this conversation between two generations, one imparts knowledge and rules to the other, which, in turn, is obliged to develop rules suitable to its times. Therefore, the predicting of the future makes greatest sense in school. Life brings new and new values which one has to independently include, together with the discoveries from other fields, in his activity. This way or another, even if we were most sensitive to contemporaneity , we have to realize that we are teaching tradition. We ourselves are making a living out of the heritage of the beginnings of the century, a heritage which reached its apogeum in the twenties and which starts to be boring to us.
But man feels the true taste of space when he is in its middle. When he perceives it while moving – that is, in time. When I think of the space made of human life and of its perception in time – I always think of music. Although it sounds like an exaggeration, the music of space is more and more existent. It is being discovered by contemporary artists, who arrange elements in rhythms, in phrases which come, pass by and continue to exist outside them, in compositions containing tensions and dramas impossible to achieve in any other discipline of art, though usually easily comparable... I think that, like an ear for music, there exists a general predisposition for the perception of space. An ear for space, a sense of space. The elements for constructing space can be different. The most beautiful elements are always those built by nature itself. In a seemingly accidental manner, but finally always with a logic of events resulting from the action of the forces of nature and in conformity with the laws of equilibrium proper to it.
The exhibitions of paintings have gone through a significant revolution. Until recently they defended themselves against the rest of the world with thick frames, most frequently gilt. They defended their illusory spaces (contained within the frames), against the rivals hanging next to them and against the space in which they found themselves. Their number was unlimited, and the distance between them and their arrangement – unimportant. Next they got rid of their dangerously looking frames – and they changed their painting matter. Then they began radiating to the outside world. It turned out that the selection of the neighbourhood and the arrangement in space played a basic role, frequently bearing on the inside of a painting. We could speak of the beginning of their social life. Moreover, it turned out (which could have been foreseen) that the contents of the individual paintings, arranged in a manner correct for these contents, collectively gave new values in the space between them.
Stanisław Zamecznik
Translated by Lech Petrowicz.
The text Stanisław Zamecznik: From My Diary was first printed in the catalogue “Stanisław Zamecznik 1909-1971”, published by Zachęta, Warsaw in November 1973.
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Selected works; documentation of exhibitions designed by Stanislaw Zamecznik:
A Study of Space, Gallery ”New Culture” in The Jewish Theatre, Warsaw, 1958. Collaboration between Stanislaw Zamecznik and Wojciech Fangor.
A Study of Space at The Jewish Theatre was recognized as an important artistic event in its time, and later considered one of the first examples of so-called “environment-art”. The exhibition featured twenty paintings arranged “three dimensionally” in the gallery space. The paintings were displayed on freestanding easels, arranged in such a manner that they overlapped each other, displaying the canvases from all sides and presenting them as three-dimensional objects rather than flat pictures. Fangor painted these abstract paintings in close collaboration with Zamecznik. They called them “hungry” paintings: -“The exhibitions of paintings have gone through a significant revolution. […]they got rid of their dangerously looking frames – and they changed their painting matter. Then they began radiating to the outside world. […] We could speak of the beginning of their social life. Moreover, it turned out that the contents of the individual paintings collectively gave new values in the space between them.”
Color of Space, The Stedeljik Museum, Amsterdam, 1959. Collaboration between Stanislaw Zamecznik and Wojciech Fangor.
The exhibition Color in Space, was a collaboration with the artist Wojciech Fangor and a follow-up to the exhibition A Study of Space the previous year;
– “The first exhibition of spatial painting took place in Warsaw in the summer of 1958. It provided us with many unique experiences, some of which tested our premises while others produced unexpected discoveries, and it was particularly the latter that we found most valuable. For the first time it was possible to see and feel, in a fashion much more distinct than before, the rhythm of space defined by painterly objects.”
Fangor and Zamecznik were invited by Willem Sandberg, director of the Stedeljik Museum at the time, to make a spatial composition as part of the exhibition “Contemporary Polish painting”. With Color in Space they continued the experiments on spatial painting;
– “We decided to test the influence of colour on space. Having built a structure saturated with blue, red, black and white, we designed a sequence of events to be perceived in time along a predefined path. This path led viewers through constant confrontations of forms and colours; those already stored in the memory with those that succeeded. For example, passing through a space saturated with red, which aggressively penetrated the entering spectator’s mind, primed his memory with the image of red. With this image in mind, he next encountered a group of black and white structures. The confrontation between the image imprinted in his mind and the one actually perceived created a new and specific expression of the black and white. In successive phases, a blue space replaced the red, generating a completely different experience when confronted with the black and white structures again. This exhibition fully confirmed our anticipations and added a few new highly intriguing questions, revealing challenges lying ahead of us.”
Color in Space started with a discussion on painting in the expanded field and was later later considered one of the first examples of so-called “environment-art” in Europe.
Posters from The Federal Republic of Germany, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1957. Exhibition design by Stanisław Zamecznik.
Proposal for a new pavilion at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1958 (not realized). Architects: Oskar Hansen, Lech Tomaszewski and Stanisław Zamecznik.
This project won the architectural competition for a new pavilion for Zachęta. The idea was to design an ideal modern building for art events and exhibitions. The New Zachęta building had an economical and simple form. The building was a testing ground for completely new architectural solutions. It featured shifting walls and ceilings, and simple way of transporting art objects from the ground floor to higher floors. The new Zachęta building also enabled the use of day light. The new solutions created ultimate conditions for presentation of art. Unfortunately, the new pavilion was never realized. The model shown on the photographs were made by Piotr Zajlich.
Polish Pavilion at the International Fair in Barcelona, Spain, 1959. Exhibition design by Stanisław Zamecznik.
The pavilion in Barcelona was homage to the work of Antonio Gaudi. Although Zamecznik was no fan of the style of “art nouveau”, the Spanish architect’s work made a strong impression on Zamecznik. He was especially interested with Gaudi’s circular, flexible and organic forms and the relationship between sculpture and architecture. Another thing he shared with Gaudi was the aspiration to create a total work of art. Zamecznik always made every effort to achieve a formal harmony of light, color and shapes. He often compared his work with music; -“Everyone have a sense of space in their body”.
Henryk Stażewski at Kordegarda, Warsaw, 1959. Exhibition design by Stanisław Zamecznik.
Henryk Stażewski belonged to the first generation Polish constructivists. This exhibition presented a group of paintings Stażewski called ”Relieffs”. Zamecznik designed a space where he could integrate the paintings as elements in an interior reminiscent of Stażewski compositions. Zamecznik considered this design to be a bold experiment using the paintings as figures on a “canvas”. He hung the paintings on curved, rectangular wall elements. On them, he placed Stażewskis paintings in the upper corners. Lamps were placed vertically at the center of the wall or horizontally at the very top, thus providing each wall with its own light source, giving the relief’s sharp shadows. The wall elements, when seen together, could be viewed as a whole work of art.
Henry Moore at Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1959. Exhibiton design by Stanisław Zamecznik and Wojciech Zamecznik.
Stanisław and Wojciech Zamecznik designed an intimate atmosphere around the work of Henry Moore with this design. They partly enclosed some of the sculptures in curved wall elements, isolating them from the rest. They placed the works on unconventional heights - increasing the emotional tension generated by the sculptures. They also made use of a range of green colors on curved wall elements and boards placed on the floor as backdrop for the pale figures. The wall elements were made out of fiberboard, revealing the way in which they were built, a common mark amongst architects at that time. Moore supposedly claimed that his work had never before been displayed in such an interesting way.
The Family of Man, the National Theatre in Warsaw,1959. Exhibition design by Stanislaw Zamecznik and Wojciech Fangor.
Shiko Munakata exhibition, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1961. Exhibition design by Stanisław Zamecznik.
Exhibition of Polish Posters at Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1961. Exhibition design by Stanisław Zamecznik.
A Color in Space. Installation on the square in front of Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1961. Part of a series of exhibitions celebrating Polish art for 15 years of People's Republic of Poland. Collaboration between Stanislaw Zamecznik and Wojciech Fangor.
National Photography Exhibition in Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1962.
Exhibition design by Stanisław Zamecznik and Wojciech Zamecznik.
Stanisław and Wojciech Zamecznik made an unconventional design for this exhibition featuring Polish photography. As a concept for the exhibition, they chose to look to the very beginning of photography. The photographs were mounted on boxes marked with a dot, mounted on freestanding legs. The boxes were reminicent of the first devises for photographing, the camera obscura. This exhibition design is a perfect example of how they would make an associative environment for the work displayed. The National Photography Exhibition was part of a series celebrating „15th Anniversary of the People's Republic of Poland”. They received a prize for this work.
Books and Illustrations, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1962. Part of a series of exchibitions celebrating Polish art for 15 years of People's Republic of Poland. Exhibition design by Stanisław Zamecznik.
Zamecznik created an ingenious design for the showcases holding the books; cylindrical elements resembling components from old-fashioned printing presses, made of simple, perforated fiberboard. Zamecznik managed to create a striking visual and a uniting structure for the exhibition. The function of the elements was also to lead the viewer’s movement in the space and thus controlling the narrative of the exhibition, using letters on the end of each showcase as a guiding tool. The exhibition was part of a series celebrating „15th Anniversary of the People's Republic of Poland”. Zamecznik received a prize for this work.
Interior Architecture and Decorative Arts at Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1963.
Exhibition design by Stanisaw Zamecznik in collaboration with T. Blażejowski, J. Kosiński, Z. Tomaszewska.
With this exhibition design, Zamecznik focused on showing the diverse styles of design and philosophy of contemporary interior architecture. Industrial scaffolding provided both an economical construction and a striking visual element that allowed him to make use of the high ceiling and to play with untraditional ways of displaying objects. Another powerful visual element he made use of in this exhibition was the suspended boxes presenting photographs of designers work. The overall impression was somewhat chaotic and was more reminicent of a designer’s workshop, than a fine art gallery. They received a prize for this work.
Hindi miniure paintings, The Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki Museum, Warsaw, 1965. Exhibition design by Stanisław Zamecznik.
The exhibition presented a selection of Indian miniature painting masterpieces. Zamecznik placed each miniature painting in separate tubes installed either horizontally at the height of the viewer’s eye or vertically, standing on the floor. The tubes provided an intimacy between the miniature paintings and the viewer. Zamecznik installed lights inside the tubes, enabling the viewer to admire every detail in the miniature work. The design created a mysterious atmosphere with the treasures “hidden” inside the tubes.
Warsaw 1945 by Leonard Sempoliński, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 1969. Exhibition design by Stanisław Zamecznik.
Leonard Sempoliński was one of the first photographers to document the city of Warsaw after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. In January 1945 Sempoliński got the permission from the Russian administration to photograph the city in ruins after Hitler’s methodical destructions. The photographs were shown at Zachęta under the title Warsaw 1945. Stanisław Zamecznik emphasized the horror within the images through the display; he presents each photograph on separated boards, collectively forming a structure reminiscent of the perfectly arranged headstones in a graveyard. The room itself was left in an almost ascetic, white state. The only detail in the exhibition was a solitary piece of black cloth mounted on the wall resembling a burial shroud.
The project is realized with generous support from EEA Grants, Norway Grants, MKiDN and OCA.