Chochołów, Sławoszyno, Chęciny, Celejów — the exhibition unfolds far from the centres of art, and its protagonists are not artists but the titular People — the inhabitants of Polish villages and small towns. The narrative spans three decades, from the 1960s to the late 1980s. During this time, independently of each other and outside the realm of official artistic policy, Edward Dwurnik and Zofia Rydet embarked on their own unique, private journeys deep into the country. Their goal was to encounter the people living there, to speak with them, and to record their lives: portraits against the backdrop of their homes and daily activities. The practice of both artists carried an extraordinary dimension – empathetic and charged with existential emotion — while also seeking an unmediated truth amid the realities of systemic social engineering and political oppression.

Dwurnik, the son of a locksmith, and Rydet, the daughter of a lawyer, created a humanist, individualised image of Polish society under the Communist regime, woven from personal stories, names, and faces. Our exhibition, for the first time on such a scale, brings together into a cohesive landscape the paintings, drawings, and photographs of two key figures of 20th-century Polish art, revealing the intuitive kinship of their interests and their uncompromising passion for humanizing art.

To expand on these two historical bodies of work, in the conviction of their profound relevance today, we have invited Paweł Althamer — an artist who for many years has been developing his own vision of a spiritualised social sculpture.

Already during his studies in the mid-1960s, Edward Dwurnik eagerly took part in informal artistic excursions, traveling with friends to Chęciny near Kielce. Many drawings were created there. In June and July 1976, together with Teresa Gierzyńska, the artist spent several weeks in the Kashubian village of Sławoszyno. This private, summer open-air session resulted in a remarkable cycle of paintings and a collection of drawings in which Dwurnik portrayed the villagers and their homesteads.

“As I painted,” he recalled, “the content began to emerge. The very kind, hardworking residents made their farms available to me, described their neighbors and their stories, corrected mistakes, and felt co-responsible for the ‘faithfulness’ in rendering the details of nature.” The series of drawings My Models, depicting children from Sławoszyno, was created in the latter part of his stay as a separate project, after the paintings were completed. Together, the two cycles form an artistic document based on direct observation, close to conceptual typology and at the same time surprisingly lyrical.

Zofia Rydet’s legendary Sociological Record is a cycle of several tens of thousands of photographs portraying people in their natural surroundings, among household objects, furniture, and decorations — a project never completed by the artist. She took these photographs in various regions of Poland, focusing mainly on villages, old houses, and people with whom “you cannot make an appointment for the next year.”

The first photographs for the Record were taken in 1978 in Podhale. This was a deliberate choice by the artist, who held a particular esteem for the local population (górale). “These are people with very great ambitions,” Rydet explained. “The góral is proud of being a góral. They have characteristic faces, very beautiful faces.”

In Podhale, in Chochołów, she created the photographs that make up the unique photographic portfolio presented here, compiled by the artist in the 1980s. It was most likely produced on commission from the state foreign trade enterprise Ars Polona with a view to presentation at international fairs.

For three decades, Paweł Althamer has been realising his own vision of a spiritualised social sculpture, inviting people from his immediate surroundings to collaborate, while also often engaging communities he encounters in the course of his travels. Maria Juana — a figurative assemblage referencing classical sculpture — was created in the small Italian town of Licenza near Rome, where Althamer took part in a private artistic workshop. It was composed of elements brought from the sculptor’s Warsaw studio as well as ceramic finds sourced locally. The final form emerged through a collective process involving the residents of Licenza on the main square of this historic town.

The sculpture carries many personal motifs, including a miniature self-portrait of the artist and the faces of his family members. At the same time, it stands as a sensual allegory of liberation and an embodiment of art as a communal act carried out beyond artistic and metropolitan centers.

Paweł Althamer’s work is presented in collaboration with the Foksal Gallery Foundation