At the end of February, “Hanna Krzetuska. The Painting Must Play, Though It Makes No Sound” will go to print. This is already the second book that Art Transparent has dedicated to the artist, while at the same time working on a third one — a catalogue raisonné. Read the introduction to the publication prepared by Michał Bieniek:

“Playing” to the Fullest – on Hanna Krzetuska and the Art Transparent Foundation

The paths of Hanna Krzetuska and the Art Transparent Foundation intersected for the first time in 2007. It was neither a planned encounter nor even a fully conscious one: that year, after two years of searching, our organisation – young yet already with some achievements and growing ambitions in supporting, exhibiting, and promoting contemporary art – was simply offered the opportunity to secure a permanent seat combined with a small gallery. The premises turned out to be the former flat and studio of the painter couple Hanna Krzetuska (1903–1999) and Prof. Eugeniusz Geppert (1890–1979).

The collection of works and memorabilia kept in this place – which, as a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, I had until recently known as the E. Geppert Museum – was at that time being removed and divided between the new branch of the Wrocław City Museum and the Art Documentation Centre of the Academy of Fine Arts. The municipal authorities decided to allocate the vacated premises to an independent organisation working with young local art. As no similar entities existed in the Lower Silesian capital at the time, the Art Transparent Foundation was chosen.

Hanna Krzetuska painting outdoors, photographer unknown, Rybna, 1930s, traditional photograph, courtesy of the Art Documentation Center of the Academy of Fine Arts (ASP)

Over time, both this decision and our subsequent activities in the space now known as Mieszkanie Geppertów – the Gepperts’ Flat – have turned out to be unexpectedly consistent with the history of the venue, which had already functioned as an art salon in the 1960s. It was there that the Wrocław Group was formed, and it was there that ideas and phenomena important to the local artistic community were discussed and networks of cooperation took shape.

After Krzetuska and Geppert had passed away, some of their furniture remained in the flat. In the drawers, we discovered unusual patchwork “tablecloths,” which, following a number of enquiries, turned out to be Hanna’s textile works. Eventually they also became part of the collections of the City Museum or the Art Documentation Centre of the Academy of Fine Arts. Years later, we also identified an unusual paperweight that had long migrated across our office desks as a tribal figurine from Guinea – a gift to the Gepperts, brought from Africa in the early 1970s by their friends, the Podsiadło family.

With each passing year, Krzetuska’s presence in the space seemed to grow stronger, as new threads and connections came to light. Former friends of the Geppert family, invited by curator Anna Stec and artists Monika Konieczna and Magda Franczak to participate in the artistic and research project Mit Geistern Leben, which employed oral history as a central method, recorded their memories of the artist. These testimonies now form an important part of our expanding archive.

At the same time, we began to map recordings of radio broadcasts featuring Krzetuska, as well as photographs and memorabilia scattered across various institutions in Wrocław. This work led, in 2017, to the discovery in the archives of Prof. Leon Podsiadły of Hanna’s letter sent to him to Guinea, in which, with her characteristic eloquence and critical distance, she comments on the Art Symposium organised in Wrocław in 1970.

A year later, the prevailing political conditions and the then government’s ideas on the financing of culture forced us to turn our attention to new grant programmes. It was precisely this externally enforced step beyond our comfort zone that, on the initiative of Karolina Bieniek, led to the launch of 15% of Abstraction – an ongoing series in which contemporary women artists from Wrocław and Lower Silesia respond to the oeuvre and biographies of the doyennes of the local art scene. The first instalment in this innovative sequence took the form of a sculptural and painterly dialogue between Karolina Szymanowska and Hanna Krzetuska herself.

“To maluję ja!” exhibition, photo by Małgorzata Kujda

Another important step was the project To maluję ja! / It’s Me Who Paints! Within its framework, we organised a popular science forum, an exhibition, and a publication – all centred on Hanna Krzetuska and dedicated to her. As if this were not enough, these activities coincided with the accidental discovery by photographer Małgorzata Kujda, who collaborates with us, of forty-seven of the artist’s canvases – forgotten for decades and gathering dust in the attic of the Archdiocesan Museum.

In her reflections on art, Krzetuska metaphorically concluded that “a painting must ‘play’ – even though it remains silent.” Yet many areas of silence remain in her biography: gaps, lost or forgotten fragments, and – significantly in her case – deliberate omissions. Both this publication and all the activities of the Art Transparent Foundation described here have been conceived as an attempt to recover these missing elements and restore the memory of Krzetuska’s achievements. For years, we have endeavoured to approach her life’s work with care and sensitivity, almost in the manner of conservation, so that this panoramic sketch, spanning almost the entire twentieth century, may finally “play” to its fullest potential.

Michał Bieniek