„Designer. Wojciech Jastrzębowski (1884-1963)’. Exhibition at the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw

„The exhibition, which is the first cross-sectional presentation of the artist’s entire oeuvre, takes place on the centenary of his becoming a professor at our university. In this way, we are also honouring the 100 years of the Academy of Fine Arts as a public school whose identity Jastrzębowski had a significant impact,” says the exhibition’s curator, Joanna Kania.

Divided by theme, the artist’s works are presented in three rooms: „Interiors and Furniture”, „Symbols and Everyday Life” (available until 19 May 2024) and „Composition of Solids and Planes” (available until 19 March 2024).

Jastrzębowski’s designs for the interiors were comprehensive – they also included their furnishings. Some of the furniture has been preserved in MEiN – chairs from the meeting room and the decoration of the minister’s study with cabinets topped with crystal ornament. The exhibition features a cabinet from the minister’s study and an assistant, intended for the secretariat.

The artist also designed furniture for Polish embassies and furnishings for the transatlantic liners M/S 'Piłsudski’ and M/S 'Batory’. His designs included chapels on both ships and a salon for ladies.

He created furniture for private interiors. Direct references to folk art, prevalent during the Cracow Workshops period, are evident in two chariots from around 1916. The 1930s are represented in the exhibition by furniture for Tadeusz Hołówka and for the artist’s home (a serviette). They are a mixture of the elegance and lightness of bourgeois Biedermeier and a certain bluntness, referring to the climate of folk furniture.

An element of everyday life, designed by Jastrzębowski and accompanying Poles from 1923 until the 1990s, were coins. Before the war, there were penny coins in various denominations, and since 1958 the communist Poland’s aluminium 2-zloty coin.

„The realisations for the Paris Exhibition, combining Cubist and folk art inspirations, are an excellent example of the Polish variety of art déco, often described by critics as 'Jastrzębowszczyzna’. The furniture from the Paris Exhibition has not survived. We present a fireplace design from the Pavilion and elements evoking a set from the dining room of the Esplanade Inwalidów: a batik bric-a-brac analogous to the fabrics covering the walls there, a table with a decorative veneer arrangement and an alabaster vase,’ says exhibition curator Joanna Kania.

Wojciech Jastrzębowski was a co-founder and one of the leaders of Warsztaty Krakowskie (1913) and Spółdzielnia Artystów Ład (1926). Both groups had a huge impact on the development of Polish design.

For the Cracow Workshops – an association promoting applied arts – Jastrzębowski designed the lecture hall from which the double chairs for the listeners and the radiator cover on display originate. In keeping with the Workshop’s ideas, the furniture is functional, made of local, solid wood and, with its simplicity, evokes folk art. For the Workshops, Jastrzębowski also designed kilims made of natural raw materials, maintained in a geometric regime.

The post-war designs and realisations of furniture are linked by the pursuit of functionality and lighter form with the consistent use of local wood and folk art-inspired form, which distinguished the style of Spółdzielnia Artystów Ład. A set of designs for the so-called Finnish houses, which were intended to serve as dormitories (1947-1948), made as part of Ład, has such characteristics. The student furniture combined references to tradition with the pursuit of multifunctionality and convenience (folding furniture).

An artist-designer, as understood by Jastrzębowski, is a professional with a wide range of skills, carrying out a variety of commissions and, at the same time, shaping the culture and aesthetic sense of society. „Art for every day and for everyone” was an idea promoted by the Professor and many of his alumni from the Warsaw academy. The artist shaped his vision of the unity of 'pure’ and 'applied’ art and its role in society during his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow at the beginning of the 20th century, influenced by the ideas of the Arts and Crafts Revival Movement (British Arts and Crafts Movement, Vienna Workshops, Polish Applied Art).

Artist-designer, active in the first half of the 20th century, during the period of Young Poland, the Second Polish Republic and the Polish People’s Republic. Born in Warsaw, graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, legionary and soldier of the Polish-Bolshevik war.Initiator and member of many artistic associations, including the Cracow Workshops or „Ład”. Co-author of the success of Polish art déco at the Parisian exhibition in 1925. An extremely versatile artist, he designed interiors, furniture, stained glass, textiles, medals and book graphics.