December 4, 2010 - February 27, 2011
The Władysław Hasior Gallery,
ul. Jagiellońska 18 b, Zakopane
In the 1960s and 1970s Zakopane was one of the main destinations on Poland’s cultural map. Two outstanding sculptors, Antoni Rząsa (1919-1980) and Władysław Hasior (1928-1999), lived and worked here at that time. Between 1948 and 1952, they frequented the same class at Zakopane’s art school. After several years, they met again at school, as teachers this time. Even though each of them followed their own artistic path, what connected them was their passion and work. This exhibition, a retrospective of Rząsa’s sculptures at the Władysław Hasior Gallery, is an attempt to answer the question: What mutual influence did these two remarkable artists exert on each other…?
ANTONI RZĄSA was born in 1919 in the village of Futoma near Rzeszów in south-eastern Poland. This region lies on the boundaries of Western and Eastern cultures, where the religious influences of Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox church converge. In 1938, Rząsa received a scholarship which allowed him to settle in Zakopane and attend the School of Wooden Crafts (later called the Secondary School of Fine Arts). After an interruption due to the Second World War, Rząsa returned to Zakopane and finished school in 1952, encouraged by his former teacher Antoni Kenar, who reopened the school after the war. Later, Rząsa was employed at the school as a teacher of sculpture and became Antoni Kenar's colleague and friend. From 1954 onwards, he presented his works at various exhibitions in Poland and abroad and in the 1960s he became one of Poland’s best-known sculptors.
The main subject matter of Antoni Rząsa’s works was the martyrdom of Christ and of man.
As Halina Kenarowa, an art critic and wife of Antoni Kenar, wrote: He was the first artist in post-war Poland who dared to infringe on traditional church iconography - he infused his own experience of overwhelming human pain in a conventional, ossified and sentimental 19th century tradition.
Antoni Rząsa developed a unique method of sculpting in wood; he covered his sculptures with natural paints, which he made himself, that gave them a very special and distinctive texture.
Rząsa also sculpted decorative furniture such as chairs and stools. In 1975 he opened a gallery in his house. It is now run by his son, Marcin.
Rząsa’s works are in the collections of the National Museums in Warsaw, Krakow and Poznan, the Tatra Museum in Zakopane, the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw, as well as in private collections in the USA, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy and the Vatican.
