26 October 2019 – 2 February 2020
Curator of the exhibition: Marta Derejczyk
What subjects are chosen by contemporary non-professional artists? What is the role of art in their everyday lives? Does their art find appreciation among local communities?
The answers to these and other question are presented by an exceptional exhibition assembled by the Ethnographic Museum in Wrocław and the Ważka [dragonfly] Foundation to demonstrate the current condition of folk art in Lower Silesia.
Starting from 2012, the foundation has been conducting systematic ethnographic field research in the region of Lower Silesia. Over just a few years, members of the foundation’s research teams were able to reach many highly interesting non-professional artists, painters and sculptors residing in this region. Their works are characterized by uniqueness and expressiveness of style, depict individual experience, reflect the internal sensitivity of their creators, frequently refer to autobiographical elements, as well as contain philosophical and didactic messages. The majority of them have never been shown in public, and were not sufficiently documented and studied. These artists often remain unknown and unappreciated even among their local communities.
The current retrospective shows works by artists such as the painters Zygmunt Sarna, Jerzy Lemieszka, Władysław Żukowski, Zbigniew Kaźmierski, Weronika Skiba, and sculptors Jan Zając, Ireneusz Michałek, Tadeusz Kowalski, Franciszek Kukła, Stanisław Janczak, Zdzisław Jan Nowak, Krzysztof Lis, and others.