Edward Krasiński's 'Overhead Sculptures': A Manifestation of Modernity

• Published in: Modernism/modernity (Baltimore, Md.) Vol. 29; no. 3; pp. 653 - 671
• Main Author: Błotnicka-Mazur, Elżbieta
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.09.2022
• Subjects: Art criticism; Art galleries & museums; Avant-garde; Censorship; Critics; Modernism; Modernity; Plein air; Poetics; Sculpture; Socialist realism; Stalinism; Visual artists; Wire; World War II; Poland
• ISSN: 1071-6068; 1080-6601; 1080-6601
• DOI: 10.1353/mod.2022.0025

The political and artistic situation in the post-World War II Polish People's Republic in which Krasiński lived and worked serves as a background for discussing the commonalities between Krasiński's art and ideas of interwar avant-garde art and postwar theories, thus emphasizing the idea of modernity in the title "overhead sculptures. From the start, Krasiński was involved with the "galerie autorskie" environment—the independent, to a limited extent, art galleries, like Warsaw's Krzywe Koło, founded by artists and critics during the communist era.4 Following the gallery's closure in 1966, Krasiński teamed up with art critics (including Wiesław Borowski, Hanna Ptaszkowska, and Mariusz Tchorek), as well as the artists Zbigniew Gostomski, Tadeusz Kantor, and Henryk Stażewski to cofound the Foksal Gallery.5 In the 1950s, his paintings could be seen as surrealistic poetics. Polish artists who sought to protect their creative freedom from politicization and censorship were thus forced to present their works obliquely. Since their art, seemingly of autotelic character, lent itself to multiple interpretations, the artists played a subtle game with both authorities and an audience accustomed to looking for revisionist subtexts everywhere. At the Third Koszalin Plein-air (1965), in which Krasiński formally participated, he realized several versions of the Spears, as shown in the color photographs held from the collection of the Museum of Koszalin (fig. 1), as well as the surviving film record.16 Regrettably, not all the activities at the Plein-air events were documented (Ziarkiewicz, Awangarda w plenerze, 182–83; "Osieki '64"; "Osieki '65").