Side by Side: Poland – Germany. A 1000 Years of Art and History
23 September 2011 - 09 January 2012
|
| © Mirosław Bałka
St. Adalbert, 1987
|
| |
SIDE BY SIDE
POLAND – GERMANY. A 1000 YEARS OF ART AND HISTORY
23 September, 2011 - 9 January, 2012
Organizer
Berliner Festspiele. The project is being realised by the Royal Castle
in Warsaw, and Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, and funded by the Federal
Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, and the Minister of
Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Patronage
Bronisław Komorowski, President of the Republic of Poland
Christian Wulff, President of the Federal Republic of Germany
Exhibition Curator Anda Rottenberg
Main sponsor METRO GROUP
The Outreach programme is made possible by Deutsche Bank Stiftung
Partner Friede Springer Stiftung, Polish Embassy, Polish Institute
Berlin, Stiftung für deutsch-polnische Zusammenarbeit, Adam Mickiewicz
Institut, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, City of Warsaw, Wall, Visit
Berlin, Dussmann. Das KulturKaufhaus, Polkomtel
Media partner rbb fernsehen, radio eins, rbb kulturradio, rbb Inforadio,
Der Tagesspiegel, Zitty Berlin, Dialog, Geschichte, Business &
Diplomacy, Exberliner
Mobility partner DB-Bahn AG
The exhibition is a joint project of Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin and the
Royal Castle in Warsaw have organised the exhibition jointly. It came
about within the framework of the international cultural programme of
the Polish Presidency of the EU Council in 2011. The project has been
supervised by a board of experts headed by Prof. Władysław Bartoszewski.
The exhibition curator is the Polish art historian Anda Rottenberg, who
curated numerous internationally renowned exhibitions and served as
director of Zachęta, the National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, for many
years.
Sixty-seven years and a few days have passed since 18th of September
1944 when German troops destroyed the Royal Castle in Warsaw down to its
very foundations while brutally crushing the heroic uprising of the
Polish Home Army. Twenty-two years have passed since the fall of the
Iron Curtain in Europe, twenty years since the 17th of June 1991 when
Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Minister President Jan Krzysztof
Bielecki signed the "Polish-German Treaty of Good Neighbourship and
Friendly Cooperation”, the original of which can be seen in the
exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau.
For the first time around 800 historical and contemporary exhibits,
displayed in 19 rooms and 22 chapters, will illustrate the thousand-year
history of the complex mutual relations between Poland and Germany. The
arrangement of the exhibition in thematic areas serves to enhance
understanding of the different aspects of German-Polish neighbourhood.
The exhibition begins with St. Adalbert and Richeza, who married the
future King Mieszko II and became Queen of Poland in 1025; it then
carries on up to the present day: the Landshut Wedding, Teutonic
Knights, International Gothic, German enthusiasm for Poland in 1831,
World War II, Solidarność, accession to the EU. The exhibition also
addresses the horrible period between 1939 and 1945, in which the
Germans inflicted infinite suffering on Poland and its inhabitants,
represented here for example by the film "Kanał” (1957) by Andrzej
Wajda.
Among the outstanding exhibits are the portrait of Margrave Albrecht von
Brandenburg-Ansbach by Lucas Cranach the Elder from the year 1528,
outstanding 17th century paintings from Danzig, the monumental work
"Prussian Tribute” by Jan Matejko from 1882, as well as masterpieces by
Veit Stoss, breathtaking treasure find from Środa Śląska/Neumarkt and
precious manuscripts.
Woven into the exhibition are many works of politically motivated and
internationally renowned contemporary artists, including Mirosław Bałka,
Krzysztof Bednarski, Edward Dwurnik, Jochen Gerz, Anselm Kiefer,
Gerhard Richter, Wilhelm Sasnal, Gregor Schneider, Günther Uecker, Piotr
Uklanski, Luc Tuymans and Krzysztof Wodiczko. These works can be
understood as footnotes or commentaries, as it were, on historical
events through which the past can be seen in a new perspective.
The dynastic ties of the royal house of Poland with other dynasties
offer a good introduction to this topic. They illustrate the European
context of the Polish-German relations, in particular the marriage
politics of the Jagiellonians – their connections with the Hohenzollerns
and the Habsburgers, as well as the heyday of the Polish elective kings
from Vasa family. These links are represented by the portraits of
Cranach the Elder, Hans Maler zu Schwaz, Martin Kober and Pieter
Danckerts de Rij, among others. The artworks portray the personal ties
between the European dynasties and convey a lively impression of an
illustrious epoch that gave rise to a unique cultural high point in the
history of the Polish monarchy.
The outstanding exhibits from the legendary dowry of the Polish Princess
Anna Katharina Konstanze Vasa that are displayed in the exhibition
convey an idea of the wealth of those times – the dowry had to be spread
among 70 wagons when the Princess set out for the home of her husband,
Philipp Wilhelm, Count Palatine of Neuburg, after their magnificent
wedding in St. John’s Church in Warsaw.
Thanks to the support of lenders from throughout Europe the exhibition
provides a unique opportunity to see all ten extant engravings and all
of the known drawings of the master wood sculptor Veit Stoss. His life
and works are of equal importance to German and Polish art history.
Stoss’s greatest masterpiece, the wooden altarpiece in St. Mary’s Church
in Krakow was sculpted in the years 1477-89, and is now considered one
of the most outstanding altarpiece triptychs of the late Middle Ages.
Veit Stoss was a citizen of Nuremberg and Krakow – his work in the
exhibition testifies to close cultural ties between the two cities in
the 15th and 16th centuries. Martin-Gropius-Bau will show sculptures
from both the Polish and the German period of the master’s work,
including two groups of figures and a design drawing made for the
so-called Bamberg Altar. The latter are an example of Stoss’ activity in
Nuremberg, and an evidence of the artist’s virtuosity.
The multi-faceted works of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus from
Thorn/Toruń are represented by his original manuscripts, the first
edition of his magnum opus De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium from
1543, and books from his personal library. With a look back into the
past when the respective national historiographies in both Germany and
Poland claimed Copernicus exclusively for their own nation, he will be
shown in the exhibition as an example of European intellectuality and
transnational thought.
Displayed in the heart of the Martin-Gropius-Bau, the atrium, will be,
among other things, the history of the Battle of Grunwald/Tannenberg in
1410 – marking the defeat of the Teutonic Knights, by a
Polish-Lithuanian army – which deeply influenced German-Polish relations
as ‘lieux de memoire’. The monumental work "Prussian Tribute”, a
historical oil painting by Jan Matejko from 1882 – on loan from Krakow –
will also be seen in the atrium. Because the German occupiers planned
to destroy the work during the Second World War, it had to be
disassembled and transported to a secret location. The painting shows an
event from the year 1525: Duke Albrecht of Brandenburg pays tribute to
the Polish King, who has formed the Duchy of Prussia – as a Polish fief –
out of the former territories of the Teutonic Knights; at this point
Ducal Prussia became largely sympathetic to the Protestant faith.
The chapter devoted to fairly recent history deals with transnational
relations. It focuses on German-Polish networks of artists in the 1920s
that emerged as part of an international avant-garde in opposition to
the swelling nationalisms of the 20th century. The Polish Jewish artist
Jankiel Adler, co-founder of the artists’ group Jung Jidysz in Łódź and
member of the Düsseldorf-based collective Young Rhineland, formed an
important link between Polish and German artists’ circles. He is
represented by a number of works, among them the celebrated oil painting
My Parents.
In the section devoted to the history of the 1980s and the Polish
Solidarność movement the artists are set against the backdrop of a tense
political situation, seen as ambassadors, with their art as mediator
between the two countries. In 1981 with Construction in Process in Łódź,
the Polish artist Ryszard Waśko had initiated a series of exhibitions
with Polish and international artists such as Roman Opalka, Józef
Robakowski, Richard Serra and Günther Uecker. With the exhibition Waśko
sensitised artists "from the West” to the political situation in Poland.
In response, immediately after the declaration of martial law in
Poland, Düsseldorf artists organised the auction "Against Martial Law in
Poland – for Solidarność”. A number of important works made on that
occasion can be seen in the exhibition, including Günther Uecker’s
Splinter for Poland. Another key work from the period is Joseph Beuys’
Polentransport 1981, which takes reference to Solidarność in Poland in
1980/81. In the summer of 1981 Beuys had travelled to Poland and
presented the Joseph Beuys Archive, a crate with graphic works, posters
and photos, to the Łódź Art Museum as a gesture of the "symbolic
transplantation” of his artistic ideas.
Testifying to the vivid cultural exchange between Poland and Germany,
the loans in the exhibition come from more than 200 lenders from Polish,
German and international museums and collections, among them the
National Museum in Warsaw, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, the British Museum in
London, Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna, and the Vatican Library.
An extensive educational programme, also addressed to schoolchildren and
students, aims to promote cultural exchange between Poland and Germany.
The programme communicates knowledge and contributes to a growing
together of the Europe nations and to mutual understanding.
www.gropiusbau.de
|