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.

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

Museum profile: Warsaw Archdiocese Museum.