Andrzej Wróblewski: Waiting Room

Andrzej Wróblewski. Waiting Room is an exhibition of Andrzej Wróblewski’s work dedicated to his visit in Yugoslavia and the late work of the artist at Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, Slovenia from October 15, 2020, to January 10, 2021.

This is the first exhibition of Wróblewski’s work outside of Poland in which the curatorial team—Magdalena Ziółkowska and Wojciech Grzybała from the Andrzej Wróblewski Foundation and Marko Jenko from Moderna galerija—has focused on the final years of the artist’s work. This period symbolically begins on May 10, 1954 and ends with Wróblewski’s death on March 23, 1957.

The metaphorical through line of the exhibition rests upon two symbolic figures—people pinned to chairs in anticipation, reflection, and timelessness; degraded, anonymous and undifferentiated. This “waiting-room mentality,” as the German playwright Heiner Müller once called it, is characteristic of the experience of Communist Central and Eastern Europe.

The exhibition consists of over 120 works of Andrzej Wróblewski from the final period of his work, 1955–57. Among them are pieces inspired by Wróblewski and art critic Barbara Majewska’s 1956 trip to Yugoslavia. There are also such well-known paintings as Waiting Room I, The Queue Continues, Waiting Room II, (Chairing I) and Tombstone, (Tombstone of a Womanizer), numerous gouaches, monotypes, and a dozen or so large-format works created on brown packaging paper. Among them, a large number of these paintings have never been exhibited or haven’t been displayed for over sixty years.  In addition to Wróblewski’s work, the exhibition features work by artists from former Yugoslavia, including some whom Wróblewski met personally, that build a common context and often establish direct dialogue with Wróblewski.

The exhibition is co-organized by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with the same title, published in English, with seven critical essays by Ivana Bago, Branislav Dimitrijević, Wojciech Grzybała, Marko Jenko, Ljiljana Kolešnik, Ewa Majewska, and Magdalena Ziółkowska. The publication also includes the presentation of archival materials, photographs from Wróblewski and Majewska’s trip, and reproductions of 220 works by the artist. The catalogue is co-published and distributed by Hatje Cantz in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

Andrzej Wróblewski was a painter, historian, and art critic, and one of the key figures of post-1945 Central and Eastern European art. Born in 1927 in Vilnius, he graduated in art history from the Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he became an assistant in the Faculty of Painting. He received a special mention at the Bucharest Festival (1953), took part in numerous nationwide art exhibitions, including the famous show at the Arsenał in 1955 Against War, Against Fascism, and a solo exhibition of works on paper at the Club of the Polish Writers’ Union, Warsaw in February 1956, organized with the help of friends, including Andrzej Wajda.

In the same year, from October 30 to November 21, he traveled to Yugoslavia with art critic Barbara Majewska. Their three-week stay in Belgrade, Ljubljana, Skopje, Zagreb, and in smaller towns such as Portoroż, Piran, Ohrid, included not only participation in the artistic life of the then Yugoslavia, but also walks through picturesque streets, visiting ethnographic collections, and learning about architectural monuments. These experiences were reflected in the work created during the last months before Wróblewski’s unexpected death in 1957, during his last walk in the Tatra Mountains.

For further information, please contact: akrzyzanowska@andrzejwroblewski.pl