The exhibition will present the output of the artistic community and the artists that temporarily settled in Zakopane, for whom the Tatra mountains and the Highlander culture were an important inspiration. The exhibition will showcase paintings, engravings, sculptures, handicraft works and photographs as well as prints (posters, books and others) from the Tatra Museum collection as well as some that are on loan from other collections.
"Oksza" was Stanisław Witkiewicz's third project in the Zakopane style. The design was drawn between 1894 and 1895. Ordered by Bronisława and Wincenty Kossakowski, it was executed in the years 1895-1896 by a team of Highlander carpenters led by Wojciech Roj and Jan Obrochta. The villa was then named "Korwinówka" (a title that derives the Kossakowski family coat of arms, Korwin). There are no records of the transaction, but the villa was presumably sold in 1899 to Count Marcin Kęszycki and renamed "Oksza", after his family coat of arms. In the 1920s, local social activist Klara Jelska bought "Oksza" for the "Odrodzenie" Association, which rebuilt it and, changing its original design, set up a sanatorium there. Next, the villa became a boarding house of a Zakopane school. After the Second World War, the authorities used it as a house for children recovering from various ailments, and in 1965 it was turned into a state-owned guest house. In 2006, the building was listed on the Małopolska Region Monument Register. Oksza villa was restored and adapted for the Gallery of 20th Century Art in 2010.
photos: Jarek Możdżyński
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