The Memory of the Uprising

Bogusław Lustyk (born 1940 in Warsaw, a graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts) has returned to the Warsaw Uprising as a subject throughout his career. He has held more than 40 solo and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad, and among his best-known works are Warsaw’s own Uprising-themed installations: “Dziś idę walczyć, mamo” (“Today I Go to Fight, Mom”), “Powstańcze szanse” (“Insurgent Chances”) and “Exodus”.

“The Memory of the Uprising” presents the artist’s paintings and spatial works dedicated to the memory of 1944. The exhibition is curated by Tomasz Jagodziński and supported by the Society for the Memory of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, with backing from the Mazovian Regional Government.

The opening took place on Thursday, 30 July 2026 at 13:00, just before the 82nd anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. The exhibition runs through 25 October 2026 (the museum extended it from the original 4 October) at the Brama Bielańska Gallery, on the grounds of the Warsaw Citadel (address given by the museum: ul. Skazanych 25) - a branch of the Museum of Independence.

What to expect

This is a temporary show in a single gallery, not a museum in its own right. The Brama Bielańska Gallery sits inside an 1835 gateway into the Warsaw Citadel, the fortress the Russian tsar built to keep the city under control. The museum describes it as the usual first stop before the Tenth Pavilion, the Citadel’s former political prison.

The museum presents Lustyk as a painter, printmaker and sculptor who does not re-create the fighting of 1944 literally. Expect expressive forms, hard colour contrasts and symbols you are left to read yourself, not maps, timelines or archive photographs. It is one survivor’s personal take on the Uprising.

The museum publishes no list or count of the works, and no press coverage of the show has appeared so far. The gallery alone is a short visit; it works best as the start of an afternoon at the Tenth Pavilion.

Context

The Warsaw Uprising was the Polish Home Army’s attempt to free the city from German occupation before the Red Army arrived. It lasted 63 days, from 1 August until the capitulation on 2 October 1944, and ended with the city’s destruction. Lustyk was born in Warsaw on 15 July 1940. In a 2010 interview for the Warsaw Uprising Museum’s oral history archive he recalls spending the first weeks of the Uprising, aged four, in a basement shelter on ul. Żelazna. His family then passed through the transit camp in Pruszków, where his father was sent for forced labour in Germany. The show was originally due to close on 4 October, two days after the 82nd anniversary of the capitulation; the museum has extended it to 25 October.

Tickets and time

• Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-17:00 (10 AM - 5 PM), exhibitions closed on Mondays. The museum gives these hours for the Tenth Pavilion “including the Brama Bielańska Gallery”.
• Branch prices: 20 PLN regular, 10 PLN reduced, children under 7 free, 1 PLN with the Polish Large Family Card (Karta Dużej Rodziny). The museum lists no separate price for the gallery alone; to check, call +48 22 839 12 68 or write to xpawilon@muzn.pl.
• Free on Thursdays with a free ticket; the museum states this for the whole branch, the gallery included.
• Online tickets: Museum of Independence ticket shop.
• Address: the museum gives the Tenth Pavilion’s address for the gallery, ul. Skazanych 25, inside the Warsaw Citadel in the Żoliborz district, north of the Old Town.
• How long: the gallery is a short stop; with the Tenth Pavilion and the Execution Gate, allow about two hours.
• English on site: the museum’s pages say nothing about English labels for this show. Our museum profile notes that the Tenth Pavilion’s displays are mostly in Polish, so a translation app helps.

Who it is for: visitors who already know the story of the Uprising and want to see how a child survivor turned it into art, ideally on a free Thursday combined with the Tenth Pavilion. If you are new to the subject, or visiting with young children, start at the Warsaw Uprising Museum instead.

Updates

• 2026-09-17 - exhibition extended to 25.10.2026, originally until 04.10.2026 (source: Museum of Independence, in Polish)

See also

• Tenth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel - the Citadel’s former investigative prison, a short walk from the gallery, with prisoners’ cells and the Execution Gate.
• Mausoleum of Struggle and Martyrdom - another branch of the Museum of Independence, currently showing Eugeniusz Pichell’s woodcuts of Warsaw in September 1939, a second artist’s view of the city at war.
• Warsaw Uprising Museum - the full story of the 63 days; its oral history archive holds Bogusław Lustyk’s own account.

The dates are confirmed by the opening invitation on the Tenth Pavilion’s website (in Polish), and the branch’s September programme lists it among current exhibitions.

Museum profile: Museum of Independence.