Displayed in the Gallery are Władysław Hasior’s famous banners, spatial compositions and sculptures made of various materials as well as objects of daily use, often bordering on junk, which have in the artist’s hands acquired a new meaning. Bearing metaphorical, witty, slightly pervert titles, they make one ponder on the present-day world and art.
Art historian Marek Rostworowski wrote about the artist: ‘Hasior is related to late-mediaeval artist-poets who evoked a beautiful awe-inspiring world combining reality with metaphor and the otherworldly, one intended to charm the reality-harassed individual longing to step beyond it... [That was at] the time of Hieronymus Bosch, Bruegel, witches and Spaniards enamoured of martyrdom... In him [Hasior], nothing is what it is, but what it looks to the unbridled imagination. Another reason why it is a fairy tale is that in Hasior’s sentences the words mean something different from what each of them means separately.’
Mariusz Hermansdorfer wrote in a catalogue of his exhibition: ‘Władysław Hasior’s works have a universal quality. They are also very Polish. Connected with the region of Podhale, its culture, faith, history and nature, the local people’s efforts and rhythm of life, the tradition and the present of the area, they have a universal meaning. It is not an additional element, one that occurs besides the local values. Quite the contrary, whatever Hasior does, has universal traits.’ It seems that Mariusz Hermansdorfer’s words are the synthesis of Władysław Hasior’s oeuvre. Władysław Hasior died in Zakopane on 14 July 1999. In the artist’s lifetime the gallery was a venue for meetings with art, which he conducted. Enjoying a standing invitation to the section allotted to temporary exhibitions, contemporary artists, painters, sculptors and photographers regularly presented their works there.