TRAGEDY AND GESTURES. Fugue and Invention in the Painting of Wiesław Szamborski

A chamber-scale exhibition of about a dozen paintings by Wiesław Szamborski from 1964-2013, built around the motif of fugue - flight and invention at once.

Warsaw Archdiocese Museum on the exhibition:

The flourishing of independent culture in Poland fell in the crisis years of the 1980s, the decade of the “Solidarity” uprising and martial law. The motif of fugue (Latin fuga - flight, pursuit, exile) is timeless; in Wiesław Szamborski’s painting it does not mean a simple escape from political conditions or prevailing artistic fashions, but invention - imitating and outrunning different inspirations within a stylistic polyphony. The exhibition - gathering about a dozen paintings from 1964-2013, drawn from the artist’s own holdings and the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum - is a chamber-scale attempt to recall this thread of his life and work.

What to expect

Wiesław Szamborski (b. 1941) studied and later taught at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, co-founded the New Figuration movement, and was actively involved in the independent culture movement of the 1980s. The exhibition runs through 15 November 2026.

This is one room and about a dozen paintings, so plan a short visit. According to the Catholic news site misyjne.pl, the Szamborski room sits on the same floor as the museum’s Józef Czapski show. The curator, Dr Kazimierz Piotrowski, wrote a catalogue for it, sold in the museum bookshop and its online shop. What to look for:

• The diploma painting - as reported by Niezależna, a scene of Soviets advancing from the east and driving the Germans back; the curator sees the first “fugue” here.
• Self-portraits and studio scenes - the young painter set against socialist-realist propaganda (Niezależna).
• The flower crosses of Victory Square - paintings recalling the crosses of flowers Varsovians laid every day in the 1980s on what was then plac Zwycięstwa, and which were cleared away every day (misyjne.pl).
• “Z naszego okna jesienią” (From Our Window in Autumn, 2013) - the latest work the curator discusses: the forecourt of a church on aleja “Solidarności”.

Context

Wiesław Szamborski, born in 1941, graduated with distinction in 1966 from Michał Bylina’s studio at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and went on to teach there for more than 40 years. He started out in New Figuration, a post-war current that in Poland took hold from the mid-1960s and conveyed human anxiety through expressive distortion of the figure. His paintings are held by the national museums in Kraków, Warsaw, Poznań, Wrocław and Bydgoszcz.

The venue matters. Martial law, declared in December 1981, was the communist authorities’ crackdown on the Solidarity movement. In those years the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum hosted meetings and events supporting free speech, and its collection includes independent art of that decade. The show marks 60 years since the artist’s diploma and 40 since the exhibition “Świadectwo wspólnoty” (Testimony of Community) at this museum (misyjne.pl).

The show takes its title from “Tragedia i gesty” (Tragedy and Gestures), a 1971 painting owned by the National Museum in Kraków. It is the curator’s key to the whole exhibition. He reads it like a baroque fugue: a shouting man leads, a fleeing companion echoes him, and a third figure surfaces from the dark. The museum’s text does not say whether the painting itself is on show.

Tickets and time

• Temporary exhibitions ticket: 30 PLN regular, 20 PLN reduced, 65 PLN family. It does not cover the Józef Czapski show.
• Both temporary shows plus the permanent collection: 40 PLN regular, 25 PLN reduced, 89 PLN family. Add the cathedral crypts: 43 / 28 / 95 PLN.
• Family ticket covers up to seven people: at most two adults and five children under 18.
• Free entry for children under 7, clergy and religious, museum staff, ICOM and ICOMOS members, and journalists. The museum’s price list names no free admission day.
• Warsaw Pass covers all exhibitions, permanent and temporary, and the crypts; register the card at the desk.
• Hours: Tuesday-Friday 12:00-18:00, Saturday-Sunday 12:00-16:00, closed Mondays. Closed on 1 November (All Saints’ Day).
• Buying: at the desk during opening hours (cash or card) or online in the museum’s shop. A guided tour costs 250 PLN in Polish or 350 PLN in a foreign language, and must be arranged with the museum in advance.
• Access: lift, ramp and wheelchair-accessible toilets.
• Where: ul. Dziekania 1 in the Old Town, between the Royal Castle and St John’s Cathedral.
• How long: 30-45 minutes is enough for the Szamborski room. If you also want Czapski, buy the 40 PLN ticket, since the cheaper temporary ticket does not include him.

Who it is for: visitors curious about Poland in the 1980s, the art of the Solidarity years and the Warsaw Academy painters. The museum states nothing about English labels, and the curator’s text is dense with theology and art history, so this is a harder visit without Polish. If you came for old sacred art, the permanent collection in the same building is the better use of your time.

What the press says

No English-language coverage found so far.

• misyjne.pl (23.06.2026, Karolina Binek): a report from the joint opening on 18 June that singles out the flower-cross paintings as a rare treat for many visitors and pairs the Szamborski room with the Czapski room - article, in Polish
• Niezależna (23.06.2026, Olga Alehno): an opening report in which the curator explains why he made flight the key to the artist’s whole career - article, in Polish

Curator Dr Kazimierz Piotrowski at the opening, as quoted by Niezależna: he has curated 36 exhibitions, “but this one was particularly demanding.”

See also

• Warsaw Archdiocese Museum - the permanent collection of sacred art, clocks and portraits, and the second temporary show, “Józef Czapski - L’Humanité / Humanity”, on the same floor until 29 November 2026: Czapski was one of the Kapists, whose later colourist heirs Szamborski rebelled against.
• Caricature Museum - its show “Kseruj i rozdawaj!” (Copy and Hand Out!) on zines and the independent press of the 1980s and 1990s runs until 15 November 2026, the street-level side of the same independent culture.

Tickets and opening hours are on the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum’s website.

Museum profile: Warsaw Archdiocese Museum.