Visegrad Fund
Wrocław and Berlin

On its way to the fourth, Poznań conference of the project's series, the VVP AVU and KEMKI team made a short stop in the Polish city of Wrocław. One of their interests was the Four Domes Pavilion, which currently houses the Polish contemporary art collection of the National Museum in Wrocław. Although the institution is primarily known for its extensive display of sculptural works by Marina Magdalena Abakanowicz, the team focused more on two other circuits: conceptualism and artists associated with Wrocław's Mona Lisa Gallery (Wanda Gołkowska, Jerzy Rosołowicz, Jan Chwałczyk), as well as the artworks documenting the influential event known as Sympozjum Plastyczne Wrocław '70.

 

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the non-official cultural scene in Poland, the team also visited to the Wrocław Contemporary Museum. During their visit, they were able to attend a retrospective exhibition of Stanisław Dróżdż, a notable Polish concrete poet, and explore the Jerzy Ludwiński Archive, which holds a vast collection of documents of artist's networking activities of the 1970s. Zsuzsa László from KEMKI, Budapest also met and consulted with the Polish artist, Anna Kutera. Kutera was member of the artist collective that directed the Recent Art Gallery in Wrocław, which was one of the most important international art venues in Poland in the 1970s. Zsuzsa László also had a meeting with the Polish art historian, Anna Markowska, who made essential research on the history of that gallery.

 

 

On her way back to Prague Pavlína Morganová from VVP AVU also did research in the Berlin Art Library (Kunstbibliothek Berlin), one of Germany's leading institutions focused on art-historical literature. While there, she studied publications concerned with various facets of transnational collaborations during the Cold War, which allowed her to provide the proper historical and cultural context for the documents studied at the FSO Bremen.