Jan Kasprowicz. Into the Fires. Biographical Impressions

A biographical exhibition for the centenary of Jan Kasprowicz’s death, set out across seven walls of poems and pictures, ran from 2 May to 10 October 2026 at the Kornel Makuszyński Museum, the Tatra Museum’s branch in Zakopane. The museum’s words below are our translation of its Polish text; it published no English version of the exhibition page.

Tatra Museum on the exhibition:

Taking as our starting point the poet’s words “from a cramped room (…) I went for years into the fires, where life burns through and smoulders”, we made the road itself the exhibition’s guiding theme - leaving a place one knows and setting out into the world - and chose the various forms of fire as the image that illustrates that journey.

The poet’s work is accompanied by pieces by artists of different eras (from 19th-century paintings on glass to works by Wojciech Weiss, Witkacy, Andrzej Wróblewski and Władysław Hasior), which answer, by means other than poetry, similar questions that have troubled people in every age.

What to expect

This was a biography told through verse and pictures rather than display cases of personal relics. The list of labels the museum published in English on its website divides it into seven walls. They led from an introduction and the poet’s grave through the Tatras, Lviv, despair and rebellion to Harenda and his friendship with Makuszyński. Five of them opened with a line by Kasprowicz.

A few objects stand out in that list (the labels in English translation ):

• the poet’s death mask, cast in plaster on 1 August 1926 by Stanisław Gąsienica Sobczak “Johym”;
• two pastels by Witkacy from 1926: a portrait of Jan Kasprowicz and a portrait of his wife Maria, lent by the Jan Kasprowicz Museum at Harenda;
• mountain landscapes by Andrzej Wróblewski (gouache and watercolour, 1957) and Wojciech Weiss (a view of Giewont, oil on paper, 1899);
• two works by Władysław Hasior, an assemblage and a group of sculptures from 1975, in the section on despair and rebellion;
• Kasprowicz’s dedications to Makuszyński in his volumes of 1905 and 1926, from formal to affectionate, and an excerpt from Haakon Sandøy’s 1977 film “Dagny”.

The venue was deliberate: Makuszyński was Kasprowicz’s friend and admirer. According to Radio Alex, which previewed it as the first temporary exhibition this branch had held, the show filled the part of Villa Opolanka devoted to literary Zakopane. The curator told the station that the artworks were meant to work like the illustrations in a volume of poems.

The show opened on 30 April 2026. The programme included a curator-led tour on 16 May and a lecture by Dr hab. Zbigniew Moździerz on the mausoleum at Harenda on 21 July. A lecture on the poet’s Lviv, announced for 18 August, was postponed by the museum. To close the run, the programme listed a lecture by Katarzyna Mruk on Kasprowicz’s youth and a children’s lesson on 1 and 3 October, and a finissage with a curator-led tour on 10 October.

The exhibition itself took 30-45 minutes; that is our estimate, as the museum gave no visiting time. With the permanent display on Makuszyński the visit came to about an hour.

Context

Jan Kasprowicz was born in 1860 in Szymborze near Inowrocław, one of fourteen children in a peasant family. He rose to become one of the leading poets of Young Poland, the country’s turn-of-the-century modernist movement, the author of “Hymns” and “The Book of the Poor”, and a translator. In the 1921/1922 academic year he was rector of the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv. In 1923 he settled at Villa Harenda between Poronin and Zakopane, died there on 1 August 1926, and since 1933 has rested in a mausoleum beside the house, which is now his museum.

Tickets and time

Admission to the temporary exhibition was 10 PLN, reduced 5 PLN. A combined ticket with the permanent exhibition on Makuszyński cost 18 PLN (reduced 9 PLN). Residents of Zakopane and of the neighbouring municipalities named on the price list paid 1 PLN, holders of the Large Family Card (Karta Dużej Rodziny) 5 PLN.

Thursday did not get you in free. The branch’s price list named Thursday as the free day for permanent exhibitions and said nothing about the temporary one. Visitors had to expect to pay for it; that is our reading of the price list, as the museum did not say so outright.

The branch was open Tuesday to Friday 9:00-17:00 (9 AM to 5 PM) and on Saturdays 10:00-18:00, closed on Sundays and Mondays. Last entry was half an hour before closing.

The show spoke above all to readers of Young Poland poetry and to admirers of Witkacy and Hasior, because it was built on poems. For visitors without Polish the museum made an English translation of the labels available on its website, including the lines that opened each wall. The audio guide cost 5 PLN; the museum did not state its languages.

What the press says

Two previews, no review of the display itself.

Radio Alex (29 April 2026, interview by Beata Denis-Jastrzębska): the curator explains that the title comes from one of the poet’s own lines and that the show follows both his life’s road and the changes in his writing - article, in Polish .

dzieje.pl (PAP) (1 May 2026): presents the exhibition as the Tatra Museum’s contribution to Zakopane’s Kasprowicz year, joining biography with reflection on his poetry, from his Kuyavian beginnings to Harenda - article, in Polish .

The curator on Kasprowicz’s road, speaking to Radio Alex (our translation): “Such a road is a road to the summit, but here we put a question mark.”

Updates

• 2026-10-20 - Correction: this page earlier said that two lectures took place in the summer; the second, on the poet’s Lviv, was postponed by the museum (see below). It also said the museum stated nothing about English labels; the museum has published an English translation of the labels on its website.
• 2026-10-16 - the museum announced a new date for Dr Bohdan Tykholoz’s postponed lecture “Lwów Jana Kasprowicza” (“Jan Kasprowicz’s Lviv”): 20 November 2026, after the exhibition’s close (November programme, in Polish ).
• 2026-08-11 - the museum postponed the lecture announced for 18 August; the new date was to follow (museum notice, in Polish ).

See also

• Tatra Museum profile - the main building at 10 Krupówki, with its permanent exhibition on Podhale, the region where Kasprowicz settled at the end of his life, and the weekly ticket to all branches.
• Tatra National Park Nature Education Centre - a model of the Tatras and dioramas on Chałubińskiego Street: the mountains Kasprowicz hiked and wrote about from his 1898 collection “Krzak dzikiej róży w Ciemnych Smreczynach” onwards.
• Podhale Museum in Nowy Targ - the art and crafts of Podhale in the Nowy Targ town hall, on the road from Kraków to Zakopane.

After the show

The museum has not said that the exhibition will travel elsewhere. No catalogue of the exhibition was found in the Tatra Museum’s online shop.

One item of the programme is still to come. The museum has scheduled the postponed lecture “Lwów Jana Kasprowicza” by Dr Bohdan Tykholoz of the Ivan Franko Museum in Lviv for 20 November 2026 at 17:00 (5 PM). It takes place at the Kornel Makuszyński Museum, 15 Tetmajera Street. Admission is free (November programme, in Polish ).

The press noted the exhibition in two previews in late April and early May, on Radio Alex and on dzieje.pl (PAP). No review of the display and no report on the finissage had been found by 20 October 2026, and the museum has not published attendance figures.

Current exhibitions at the Tatra Museum:

• Weś gilaweł / The Forest Is Singing - Małgorzata Mirga-Tas - an installation of textile and sculpture about the wartime fate of the artist’s family, at the Palace Museum, 7 Chałubińskiego Street, until 31 January 2027.
• Underground - A World Wrested from Darkness - caves, mine adits and life without light in the main building at 10 Krupówki, until 28 February 2027.
• Our Legacy. 150 Years since the Founding of the Woodcarving School in Zakopane - the work of the school that produced, among others, Hasior, who also featured in the Kasprowicz show; Villa Oksza, until 3 January 2027.
• Rysy - Szymon Klejborowski - a table by Stanisław Barabasz as the key to the Zakopane style, at Villa Koliba, until 31 December 2026.
• Little Farmers. Childhood Below the Tatras - archive photographs of children from villages below the Tatras, at the manor house in Łopuszna, until 1 June 2027.

Two current shows elsewhere in the network take a similar approach, one artist seen through the course of a life. Artist of Life. Wiesław Ochman shows the tenor’s paintings at the Kuncewicz House, the literary branch of the Vistula Museum in Kazimierz Dolny; the last day to visit is 9 November 2026. Witold Chomicz 1910-1984 at the Zamoyski Museum in Kozłówka presents the prints and illustrations of an artist who told stories through line, until 29 November 2026.

Museum profile: Tatra Museum in Zakopane .