Hanna Doroszuk
CHAIRS AND NETS. SURREALIST EXHIBITIONS IN POLAND

Il. Jan Mioduszewski

There has been much discussion recently of the correlation between Surrealism and Polish art, not seen exclusively through the prism of the enduring art historical narrative about the impact Western “modernity” had on the Polish art scene. The subjectivity of Polish Surrealism, once considered a peripheral phenomenon, has started to manifest. This is a consequence of the extensive research on Surrealism that adopted a decentralised perspective and gave consideration to the potential hidden in margins. The contemporary take on Surrealism responds to oppression and embraces art made by women and non‑heteronormative people, postcolonial studies, as well as the art of the Global South.¹

The fact that there was practically no contact between Polish Surrealists and André Breton’s group lay at the root of the historical negation of Surrealism in Poland. Jerzy Kujawski, whose work was contained in the Surréalisme en 1947 exhibition at the Galerie Maeght in Paris, had by then been living in Paris for two years, already a member of the French Surrealist circle, and – an even less direct connection – Polish artists in later years had associations with the international group Phases.

The reception and perception of the movement are best seen when looking at individual attitudes, rather than focussing on orchestrated and programmatic actions. Artworks reveal the influence of both historical pre‑war Surrealism with its links to Freudianism, and its later iteration that centred around occultism, magic and myth. Artists made use of some Surrealist motifs by incorporating them into their works but they tended to stick to the visual level, stressing the role of imagination, markedly less eager to, for example, turn to automatism, which was a characteristic feature of French Surrealism.²

As in art, Surrealist exhibiting patterns in Poland tended to be integrated into diverse cultural frameworks. The status of Surrealist exhibitions and their occurrence in Polish art history are even less certain. Like in the case of many other historical exhibitions, the lack of or incomplete records prove a hindrance to research.

Historically, Surrealist exhibitions constituted performative events and – like historical propaganda pieces – stood in opposition to the bourgeois capitalist model. Their aim was to present a specific world view represented by a space that was superior to the artefacts displayed within it. After the opening of the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition at Georges Wildenstein’s Galerie des Beaux‑Arts in Paris, the French critic Raymond Lécuyer observed that “paintings play no more than the role of a vague accessory.”³ Surrealist shows, similarly to other exhibitions‑installations, prioritised experience over representation, guiding viewers’ perception, engaging their senses on multiple levels. The exhibition space provided an extension to what the art was about – a “spatial Surrealist object” was brought into being.⁴

That Surrealists departed from traditional models of displaying art was plainly evident already in their first exhibition that took place in 1925 in Paris at the Galerie Pierre, founded by Pierre Loeb, and rather unsurprisingly so considering the Dada shows that had anticipated what was to come. Opened at midnight, the Surrealist Painting exhibition followed a “dreamlike narrative.”⁵ The titles of the works on show were incorporated into a story prepared by André Breton and Robert Desnos. Traditional methods of ordering artworks and attempts to shed light on the assumptions underlying the movement (the event was held only a year after the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism) had already been abandoned in favour of Surrealist experience.

The International Surrealist Exhibition marked the culmination of Surrealist shows. Its main organisers were André Breton and Paul Éluard, with Marcel Duchamp acting as “generator arbiter,” Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst as “special advisors,” Man Ray as “master of light,” and Wolfgang Paalen as “specialist in water and foliage.” Salvador Dalí’s Rainy Taxi, with snails crawling upon it, stood by the entrance to the gallery. A corridor led into the gallery (The Most Beautiful Streets of Paris), lined with mannequins (each arranged individually by invited artists); spotlights were used to light the space except during the opening reception when viewers had torches. Having passed through the corridor, one reached a central room filled with coal dust, with a glowing brazier in the middle. Suspended from the ceiling were Marcel Duchamp’s 1,200 Coal Bags, and underneath dry leaves and moss were scattered among four old‑fashioned beds, there was also a “pond” with reeds. Artworks were displayed on walls and revolving doors. The air smelled of roasted coffee and there was coal dust all around, all this accompanied by a cacophony of sounds – recordings of German soldiers marching and “the hysterical laughter of inmates in a lunatic asylum to nip the visitors’ readiness to laugh or joke in the bud” (“Les rires hystériques de pensionnaires d’une maison de fous, ceci afin de tuer dans l’œuf chez chaque visiteur toute velléité de rire ou de faire des plaisanteries.”)⁶ This spectacle also featured Hélène Vanel’s dance performance representing hysteria, which made the audience even more disoriented.

Nothing like this ever happened in Poland. Still, it is possible to identify at least a few projects in the history of Polish art displays that assimilated certain features of French exhibitions, employing a visual apparatus reminiscent of the original. No match for their precursors in terms of radicality, they adopted specific elements of spatial design that highlighted their Surrealist roots.

This article discusses exhibitions organised in Poland that display characteristics which make them akin to the tradition of Surrealist art shows. Its focus is on exhibition architecture, not on the tone of presented works. I take the 1940s as my point of departure, a decade that witnessed huge popularity of Surrealism in Poland, possibly attributable, amongst others, to a desire to adopt a “modern” visual vocabulary and a search for ways of coping with the trauma of war.

I shall write about the 1947 exhibition of Adam Marczyński’s drawings hosted by the Young Artists and Scientists Club, the Modern Art Exhibition that took place the following year at the Palace of Arts in Kraków, and the context of propaganda shows which also endeavoured to incorporate Surrealism. The next project to be discussed was carried out during the Thaw, conceived at a time when art was turning towards Art Informel – it was Jerzy Kujawski’s exhibition at the Krzywe Koło Club in 1957. Other events date back to the 1960s: Popular Exhibition (1963) and Erna Rosenstein. Paintings (1967). The design for Adam Marczyński and Jerzy Kujawski’s exhibitions were produced by Marian Bogusz, and those for the remaining projects by Tadeusz Kantor.

Both designers had contact with Surrealism in the 1940s: Tadeusz Kantor on a trip to Paris, and Marian Bogusz through his association with Czech circles. Both were active in multiple disciplines and with a background in scenography; both were the driving force of artistic life. Marian Bogusz’s designs were based on a clear visual code, deliberately referencing the origins of specific historical projects. In contrast, exhibitions designed by Tadeusz Kantor were characteristically subordinated to individual vision, which rendered them less predictable (with the exclusion of the Modern Art Exhibition). These were obviously not the only shows in the history of Polish art that related to Surrealist exhibitions, but they are traceable as the memory of them has not dissipated in recent decades. For the launching of an exhibition by Henryk Stażewski, Tadeusz Kantor and Jonasz Stern at the Krzysztofory Gallery that was never staged, “A. Walaciński [was] to record on tape choreographed laughter to be played at the opening,”⁷ a possible allusion to the guffaws played during the International Surrealist Exhibition. Of the opening of the first display at Krzysztofory Tadeusz Chrzanowski wrote in 1958: “What a show– you should have seen the first night! The lighting effects (Mr and Mrs Bogucki distributing candles to members of the audience!), the sound effects (the authentic fire bugle call from St. Mary’s […]),”⁸ which once again takes us back to the 1938 exhibition and Man Ray handing out torches to attendees at the opening. Unfortunately, little more is known about those events today.

The most important centre of modern thought in postwar Poland, apart from the Visual Artists’ Group in Kraków, was the Young Artists and Scientists Club in Warsaw. The interdisciplinary and inclusive nature of the Polish Army House made it a perfect venue for many important events in the 1940s. Marian Bogusz served as the head of the Club’s visual arts section. Unfortunately, little evidence of his innovative approach to exhibition architecture has survived to this day. Highly valuable is the photographic documentation of the presentation of Adam Marczyński’s drawings that opened on 14 December 1947, stored at the Warsaw Archives of Modern Records.⁹ The exhibition was put on several months after the inauguration of the Young Artists and Scientists Club, concurrently with the second modern art show. Marczyński’s drawings, most of them traditional, were arranged within a modern exhibition architecture, scenographically echoing the New York First Papers of Surrealism show (1942), featuring Marcel Duchamp’s famous installation Sixteen Miles of Strings. For the New York display, the artist wrapped most of the exhibition room in twine. The entire structure resembled a spider’s web, which strikingly contrasted with the fact that the project primarily comprised paintings mounted rather traditionally on panels in a neo‑Baroque interior. The best‑known photograph depicting the event, by John D. Schiff, shows the exhibition space overwhelmed by the net which impeded access to displayed artworks. By using a single instantly recognisable code (motif), the installation eventually became iconic for Surrealist scenography, to be referenced by numerous projects over the following decades.

The surviving black‑and‑white photographs taken at the Young Artists and Scientists Club depict elongated rectangular panels, most likely white, covered with nets stretched tightly over the structures or flowing loosely to the floor. Mounted inside the panels, the artworks appeared to be suspended in the air. The play of light and the contrast between the bright elements of the set and their relatively dark surroundings made the design even more powerful. Dorota Jarecka points out that, similarly to the New York exhibition, the spatial arrangement also guided visitors through this show.¹⁰

The arrangement of nets was intended to evoke the New York show, while also being a clear indication of Surrealist influences. Born of fascination with the underwater world and already present in the work of the Lviv‑based group Artes, nets appeared in Polish postwar art, for instance, in Marian Szulc or Zdzisław Beksiński’s photographs that bordered on Surrealism.

Unlike historical Surrealist exhibitions which adopted a coherent narrative linking the works with their surroundings (or employed contrast as an element of surprise), the works presented at the Young Artists and Scientists Club show were in no relation to the exhibition space – traditional drawings were at odds with the architectural setting. Executed in ink, the works were drawn with delicate lines and were realistic in form. Out of the eight works reproduced in the exhibition catalogue, only the one dedicated to Zbigniew Bieńkowski was fairly modern.¹¹ In Odrodzenie, Jan Lenica commented on the gallery’s location: “Exhibitions staged at the Club have a greater potential for creating impact because they are displayed […] in the foyer of the W.P. [Polish Army] Theatre and so the viewers, whether they want it or not, have to familiarise themselves with a painting or two during the interval.”¹² The coerced encounter with a space so engaging must have felt surrealistic too.

Adam Marczyński’s exhibition was one of Marian Bogusz’s many exhibition designs created in the postwar years. His innovative approach to spatial planning was evident even in his designs for the development of the Mauthausen concentration camp (1943–1945) into the International Artists’ Estate, which comprised exhibition halls. The design for the exhibition of Adam Marczyński’s drawings, carried out at the Club of Young Artists and Scientists, found a partial reflection in the design for the Warsaw Metaphors presentation at the Central Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions, made by Marian Bogusz fifteen years later.

Of all the exhibitions organised in Poland in the postwar years, the Modern Art Exhibition, which opened on 18 December 1948 at the Palace of Arts in Kraków, was the one most frequently cited in the context of Surrealism. In recent years, great emphasis has been placed on its didactic origin.¹³ Even so, I have decided to discuss it here because of the many direct references connecting the exhibition, curated by Mieczysław Porębski and designed by Tadeusz Kantor, to Surrealism particularly at the declarative level, as well as its unquestionable histo­rical import. In a conversation with Marek Świca, Mieczysław Porębski recalled: “The idea to place lots of chairs in the large room was probably the last to emerge. I guess that was indeed inspired by Surrealist shows – those built up or covered with strings, threads… We had seen them in photographs, we had read about them, we had also known that postwar Surrealist exhibition, and it had probably affected the visual aspect of the interiors as it was, indeed, a large‑scale «installation.» […] paintings hanging at various distances from the walls, stacked, fluid lines – that constituted a break with previous exhibiting practices […].”¹⁴ “The Modern Art Exhibition was arranged with great care, it was meant to exert impact on viewers in a surreal sense, to surprise and force them to reconsider their own consciousness,” wrote Andrzej Wróblewski.¹⁵ While a significant portion of the works on display appeared Surrealist enough, the architecture of the show – in comparison with the mythology that had been built around it and the opinions of its participants and organisers – ultimately came across as fairly classical. A detailed exploration of the exhibition space was carried out by Piotr Słodkowski, who argued that the “rejection of the rigidity of traditional salons” advocated by the organisers was, in fact, a façade, and the exhibition itself turned out traditional.¹⁶ Słodkowski also proves that Tadeusz Kantor had not seen the famous 1947 Surrealist show that is usually considered a prototype for the Kraków display. The correspondence analysed by Piotr Słodkowski indicates that Kantor had been in France before the exhibition opened and could have seen, at most, only the preparations, including the fragment of a labyrinth in the last room.¹⁷ In connection with this event, Wojciech Bałus quotes an entry from Tadeusz Kantor’s diary: “The Surrealist exhibition – we are enclosed within the real walls of a quadrangular room, without knowing what is outside: rooms without floors or ceilings – open the door a little – space,” yet he admits that it is difficult to say whether it pertains to that particular occassion.¹⁸

Surréalisme en 1947 at the Galerie Maeght in Paris was organised by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, and arranged by Frederick Kiesler solely responsible for the Room of Superstitions. It was the first major Surrealist show after the members of the group had dispersed in wartime. The exposition was accessed via a staircase made of book spines, referencing the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Next came Frederick Kiesler’s Room of Superstitions, maintaining the “continuity of architecture‑painting‑sculpture” in accordance with his theory of Correalism.¹⁹ Moving to the next room, one found a billiards table (visitors were free to use it) in the middle, preceded by Marcel Duchamp’s “rain curtain,” denoting purification. The following rooms inaugurated successive stages of initiation, a mystical experience that culminated in a labyrinthine structure with twelve altars inspired by, among other things, myths and rituals observed during the wanderings across the Americas French Surrealists were forced to undertake during the war. The overarching theme of the exhibition was the creation of a “new myth,” the space was filled with totems, astrological and magical motifs, which was consistent with the “occultation of surrealism” proclaimed by André Breton in the second manifesto.

It has been repeatedly pointed out that the 1947 version of Surrealism, after its “occultation,” was significantly different from its pre‑war iterations continually revisited in Poland in the 1940s. Although the staging of Surréalisme en 1947 coincided with the period of greatest interest in Surrealism in Poland, its impact on Polish visual culture appears negligible. Its theoretical assumptions were addressed with considerable delay and in a non‑programmatic way (e.g., by the Silesian group Oneiron).

The surviving photographs from the Modern Art Exhibition reveal that, as Mieczysław Porębski recalled, the organisers indeed put up in the middle of the “room of paintings” a construction that was a kind of installation made of chairs. Drawings were laid out on seats and on lecterns so the space had a workshop‑ish feel to it. A megaphone installation constituted another distinct feature of the Modern Art Exhibition. Sounds, including jazz music, poetry readings (including André Breton’s work) and commentaries on the works added to the experience of the show, offering the audience an opportunity to immerse themselves in the surroundings. This could be read as a reference to the sounds accompanying the International Surrealist Exhibition, yet it should be remembered that this technique was also much used at propaganda exhibitions of the time – reinforcing the message conveyed by artworks on walls, enhancing viewers’ understanding of the subject matter – which is a more likely influence in this case.²⁰

Preserved materials allow insight into the speeches delivered at the opening of the Modern Art Exhibition that placed Surrealism within a narrative consistent with Marxist dialectics.²¹ “One of the arguments strong enough to make malcontents warm up to modern art, and one that also demonstrates the vitality of contemporary visual artists and their involvement in reality, is the participation of modern painting in applied art,” wrote Marian Bogusz in the introduction to the catalogue accompanying an exhibition of Jan Lenica’s drawings at the Young Artists and Scientists Club.²² With the authorities increasing control, efforts were made to situate Surrealism within the realm of applied art. The phrase Jerzy Hryniewiecki used in his article about the Poznań fair in Architektura, “applied surrealism,” aptly described this avant‑garde‑utility model.²³ Soon afterwards, Surrealism also appeared in commentaries regarding the Recovered Territories Exhibition staged in 1948 in Wrocław.²⁴ From today’s perspective, these accounts constitute historical evidence of Surrealist entanglement with the socialist propaganda of the 1940s, while their surreal origination seems overstated in light of the preserved photographic material. Even though the Recovered Territories Exhibition featured numerous modern spatial solutions, they had little in common with scenographies of Surrealist exhibitions – apart from the fact that they formed an ideological space‑installation, which nevertheless shared significantly more features with the architecture of interwar propaganda exhibitions typical of totalitarian regimes. Surrealist echoes at the Recovered Territories Exhibition can be found in the sculptural installations contained in this show (used, for example, in the Destruction Pavilion designed by Czesław Wielhorski and Tadeusz Zieliński), yet even here the solutions introduced leave much to be desired. The link – unintended by the creators – connecting the rooms dedicated to wartime destruction at the Recovered Territories Exhibition and the International Surrealist Exhibition is the aura of decay and demolition in the former, to be followed by reconstruction, and the spectre of an impending war in the latter.

A very different parallel with historical Surrealist exhibitions, one that can be interpreted as part of a socialist‑surrealist framework, is found in anti‑colonial propaganda presentations staged in Poland. I only mention them in passing as they had ultimately little in common with Surrealism.²⁵ The Central Archives of Modern Records still holds the design for Poles – Researchers and Defenders of Peoples of Colour, a show that was intended to be displayed in capitalist countries, especially the colonial ones.²⁶ It was to include enlarged photographs, artefacts brought from ethnographic expeditions undertaken by Polish researchers, Polish publications and “relevant progressive writings by authors from among the coloured populations, translated into Polish.”²⁷ Presented in an anti‑colonial context, Polish ethnographic research was to be juxtaposed with contemporary findings in an attempt to emphasise the overarching thesis: “Poles have made a significant contribution to the research in this field and have consistently acted in defence of coloured people.”²⁸ At the same time, the House of Folk Cultures in Młociny, Warsaw, hosted exhibitions of the arts of “Peoples of Africa and Oceania” with equally anti‑imperialist overtones, stressing the role of Polish scholars in the anti‑colonial movement. A review states the following: “European imperialism, extending its rule over the vast countries of Africa and its neighbouring islands, has fashioned a thesis about the utter savagery of their peoples, supposedly lacking cultural or artistic achievement […]. The aim of the exhibition currently on display at the Museum of Folk Cultures is to familiarise the audience at home, if only to a small extent, with the works produced by this peculiar, but not the less high for that, culture of the peoples of Africa and Oceania […]. It should be stressed that Polish scholars stood out for their positive humanistic attitudes towards African peoples and vigorously condemned the oppression these peoples were made to suffer.”²⁹

There was a relation between anti‑colonial actions carried out in the interbellum and the French Surrealist movement, which is illustrated, for instance, by the exhibition La vérité sur les colonies (The Truth about the Colonies), mounted in opposition to the famous 1931 colonial show in Paris; the Surrealists famously distributed leaflets saying “Ne visitez pas l’éxposition coloniale” (Do not visit the colonial exhibition) to discourage the public from viewing it. La vérité sur les colonies was staged in collaboration with the Anti‑Imperialist League of the Communist International. This collaboration marked the first explicit implementation of communist ideology within the framework of Surrealism and brought the Surrealists closer to the French Communist Party.³⁰

Having organised the 1947 exhibition at the Young Artists and Scientists Club, Marian Bogusz revisited the design of the New York display for the benefit of a Jerzy Kujawski show at the Krzywe Koło Club, which opened on 25 May 1957. Originally involved in Kraków circles, Jerzy Kujawski moved permanently to Paris in 1945. There, he became associated with the group of Surrealists centred around André Breton, which led to the inclusion of his painting titled Dichotomy of the Suns in the Surréalisme en 1947 exhibition, later moved to Prague. The painting was also reproduced in the exhibition catalogue (on page XXXIII). The artist was the only Pole to find himself at the heart of the Parisian movement, yet, as Jerzy Ludwiński wrote in Życie Literackie, he remained virtually unknown in Poland at the time that the exhibition at the Krzywe Koło Club opened.³¹ By then, he had already been active in the Phases group. Apart from the exhibition, his acquaintance with Marian Bogusz resulted in the donation of thirteen paintings by artists associated with Phases to the planned Museum of Modern Art in Łódź.³² The culmination of Polish contacts with the French group was the 1959 exhibition Phases at the Krzysztofory Gallery in Kraków, during which André Breton’s famous message was recreated.

Jerzy Ludwiński’s review and surviving photographs (reproduced in the catalogue of Andrzej Turowski’s exhibition in Poznań)³³ suggest that, apart from Jerzy Kujawski’s current works in the then hugely popular Art Informel style, the exhibition at the Krzywe Koło Club also included his Surrealist works from the 1940s. Most of the pieces were traditionally displayed on walls, some angled out from the wall towards the viewer. Paintings were also placed on the floor, the artist’s way, according to Andrzej Turowski, of making a reference to Hans Nemuth’s photographs portraying Jackson Pollock at work and the horizontal perception of Art Informel paintings.³⁴ One canvas was suspended from the ceiling unframed.

There were strings hanging across the exhibition space. “At first, there were pieces of twine. Pieces of twine like musical strings, like straight lines (in visual as well as physical and mathematical terms), crossing each other, passing one another slantwise, backwards, in every possible way, stretched between the walls, the ceiling and the floor. Then I saw the paintings […]” – wrote Jerzy Ćwiertnia after viewing the show.³⁵ There were significantly fewer strings than at the New York exhibition, and they were tauter, less tangled. Some were spread across the entire width of the ceiling, some touched the floor, others were connected to another element of the scenography – three chairs positioned in the middle of the room; the strings between them were so dense that they formed a network. In comparison with Marcel Duchamp’s installation – based on the surviving photographs and contrary to Jerzy Ćwiertnia’s opinion, it can be concluded that this arrangement did not cause major problems: the strings were mostly located near the ceiling or in the central part of the room and could easily be bypassed to get direct access to the works hanging on the walls. The least accessible was a painting placed on the floor between the chairs, surrounded by a wooden frame separating it from its surroundings. It had a surrealistic feel to it and dated, in all probability, from the 1940s.

The set of objects used in the exhibition at the Krzywe Koło Club (and previously at the Young Artists and Scientists Club and the Palace of Art) – chairs and strings – kept reappearing in Surrealist exhibitions, which may be a result of sticking to a simple code: an association with Marcel Duchamp’s installation (string), or using the materials that were inexpensive and readily available. A permanent element of exhibitions, chairs could easily be freed from their original function and de‑utilised, offering a simple yet effective way of subverting the exhibition space. An installation of chairs wrapped in string was set up, among others, at the Exposición Internacional Surrealista at the Galería Dédalo in Santiago de Chile in 1948. Printed in the second issue of Projekt (1965), Danuta Wróblewska’s article “Warsaw Galleries” contained a picture showing Janusz Bogucki’s photo exhibition at the Gallery of Contemporary Art. Mounted along the walls at various heights were, seemingly levitating, chairs with photographs attached to them.

After the First Exhibition of Modern Art, Tadeusz Kantor carried out several projects that could be connected indirectly to Surrealism. However, these were no longer exhibitions drawing on the tradition of Surrealist presentation, using a specific code, but projects integrated with Tadeusz Kantor’s art and the building of an “active environment.” His famous Popular Exhibition is a perfect illustration of this, an installation that took the form of a happening staged in 1963 at Krzysztofory, where everyday objects were mixed with drawings, sketches and theatrical costumes hanging on string. A total of 937 objects from various stages of Tadeusz Kantor’s artistic career were put on display, and they simultaneously engaged in a game with time. “At Kantor’s exhibition, chronology came apart,” wrote Anka Ptaszkowska in an article published in Projekt, referencing a drawing dated 1410.³⁶ As with historical Surrealist exhibitions, the artist actually made it difficult for the public to access some objects. “The notion that the natural purpose of these exhibits is to be put on show would also be misplaced here,” Ptaszkowska continued. “A dense and dynamic reality is formed, a piled‑up space, filled with pieces that oust one another.”³⁷

“Hanging over your head, the largest piece in the show was unobtrusive physically but totally obtrusive psychologically” – wrote Brian O’Doherty of Marcel Duchamp’s bags with coal hanging underneath the ceiling.³⁸ It was also Tadeusz Kantor ‘s intention to made the perception of the exhibition difficult, causing discomfort in viewers and subjecting them to – to use today’s language – overstimulation.

Tadeusz Kantor also designed shows of other artists, including two monographic displays: one (curated by Helena Blum) showcasing the creative output of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz whom Kantor’s contemporaries considered a Surrealist, and one by Erna Rostein, hosted by the Central Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions in 1967. The appearance of the Kraków community in a Warsaw institution at that time can be linked to Gizela Szancerowa who maintained contacts with Kraków‑based artists.³⁹ It was especially the scenography of the latter show that has found its way into the history of Polish art exhibitions, also thanks to the extensive studies dedicated to Erna Rosenstein’s oeuvre published in recent years.⁴⁰ Here, again, Tadeusz Kantor adopted a nonchalant approach to the accessibility of the works on display which met with some objection of the audience – the engaging design, however, was not a work in its own right but rather provided a framework for another artist’s pieces. Opinions differed and many argued that Tadeusz Kantor’s project was a welcome complement to Erna Rosenstein’s oeuvre. Barbara Piwowarska carried out a comprehensive analysis of the exhibition space: “The arrangement comprised several elements: a wardrobe and a constellation of paintings that surrounded it; a wooden installation with a canvas funnel that had been attached to it with pins (casing) in the middle of the room (right opposite the wardrobe); a free‑standing structure, an object (creature) made of several dozen boxes covered with fabric; several separate booths (confessionals) with chairs; a winding narrow passage (maze) made of a multi‑part screen (a system of small canvas panels); a glass display case and a separate installation – a stand with a hanged man.” A distinct part of the design was Rosenstein’s wardrobe. The intrusion of a private object into the gallery space may bring to mind the beds placed in the central room at the International Surrealist Exhibition. In this case, the presence of the piece of furniture was even more surprising because the wardrobe was actually used on a daily basis by the artist in her flat in Jana Karłowicza Street.

Barbara Piwowarska also discussed another exhibition that was staged much later – Erna Rosenstein’s show at the Galeria DAP in Warsaw on the occasion of the artist’s receiving the Jan Cybis Award in 1996; once again, string was used as a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s design presented in New York. “Paintings depicting her parents’ heads, sewn‑up mouths, eyes and portraits of her close ones, no longer alive (including the artist’s husband, Artur Sandauer), were placed in a corner of the exhibition room which had been, as it were, cut off by Rosenstein who obscured it with a net of strings that impeded access to the works.”⁴¹ This recollection demonstrates that, just as in the case of Surrealist art in Poland, the influence of Surrealist exhibitions has, in fact, never ceased.

The status of Surrealism in Poland is ambiguous – contempora- rily,, when the right to exist has been granted to phenomena previously outside the limits set by the movement’s core and Surrealism has begun to be examined within the spectrum of global phenomena, it has come to hold a well‑deserved place in Polish art historical research. With only certain aspects of the movement being adopted and even made to serve new functions and convey new meanings, Surrealist exhibitions could never show their full glory. Marian Bogusz’s designs operated with clear visual codes which were supposed to link them to the original movement, but the similarities did not go beyond spatial experiments without ever nearing a revelation of a specific ideology. This is best seen in the exhibition of Adam Marczyński’s drawings whose traditional form stood in clear contrast to their surroundings. Such dichotomous, internally inconsistent exhibition designs that resulted from increasing censorship, material shortages and authorial innovation, were common in industrial and propaganda exhibitions of the period. They were also found in art exhibitions, best exemplified by the Exhibition of French Art at the National Museum in Warsaw (1948); Stanisław Zamecznik arranged formally traditional works on racks by colour, creating an experimental spatial installation that preceded Study of Space (1958) by almost a decade. These displays could be described as hybrid: on the one hand, “besotted by the West,”⁴² and on the other, frozen within the reality of postwar Poland. They continued to be torn between the need for modernity, experimentation and a widespread integration of the arts, and the “social procurement” and entanglement in propaganda, in the trap of “double colonisation” between socialist realism and Western modernism, as suggested by Piotr Piotrowski.⁴³ Tadeusz Kantor’s later works, in turn, approach Surrealist projects through their uncompromising and manifestative nature, the integration of space and presented objects into a single hybrid collage‑like whole. However, they do not originate in Surrealist ideology; instead, they are an expression of the artist’s pursuit of his own vision, with some of its aspects overlapping with Surrealism.