Hi,

Before we start, a technical note: I've managed to separate the mailing lists of my two newsletters and put them on separate platforms. That means if you want to recommend this one but not the other to people, you don't have to worry about friends signing up for something you weren't expecting.

38 years today...

Marek Zulawski passed away on March 30th, 1985, a whopping 38 years ago.

A few years ago, I translated his thoughts about death from his autobiography. Nearly 70 at the time, he was ruminating on his own mortality after attending a friend's funeral:

I kiss whitewashed faces. Some belong to women I had loved. When was that? Perhaps a thousand years ago. I don’t want to remember – I don’t want to reminisce.

I see a Polish athlete, once splendid in days of yore, now hobbling on crutches through fresh clay – a man from another epoch. His black frock coat spread out like a raven’s wings.

Everybody here carries grief with them. They assail me from every flank. They crave my blood.

Vampires.

Read the full excerpt here.

It's good to know that even though it's been so many years, his work is still being appreciated what with that new exhibition coming up...

Exhibition 2023

So yes, a small update about the upcoming exhibition of Marek Zulawski's work at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń.

The opening will now take place on September 15th, and the show will run until the end of the year! 🎉

I'm still waiting for more promotional materials to share, but hopefully there will be some soon.

Exhibition 1946

When I was doing my search for random Marek Zulawski stuff a few issues back, I found this little bit of press for Marek's exhibition at the National Museum of Warsaw in 1946:

I've translated it into English here:

Żuławski, son of the writer Jerzy Żuławski, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and then in Paris. He settled in England in 1936 and has worked and exhibited there ever since. In 1938, he came to Poland and had an exhibition at the IPS in Warsaw and in Łódź. In Great Britain, he has made a name for himself in the local artistic community there. He has had solo exhibitions in London, in 1937 and 1942.

In response to a questionnaire by the London art magazine Studio, he told them about his art:

"As a painter, I don't want to reject - for any aesthetic theory - any element that could enrich the painting I'm working on at any given moment. I'm primarily interested in colour, form and light, and I strive to connect them organically with each other, but on this path I also look for spatial values and the character of what I'm painting. All these elements together create the atmosphere of the picture, its mood."

"When it comes to aesthetic theories, painters create them in their paintings. Woe to the painter whose paintings are only the product of the aesthetic theory prevailing in a given period and environment - and nothing more," he writes in the current exhibition's catalogue.

It is rare to see such an extensive exhibition by a single painter. More than 50 canvases, several drawings and 2 cement sculptures. This is an impressive number considering that all the works come from during the recent war (1940 to 1944).

It seems impossible for us to describe the beauty and value of Marek Żuławski's works in just a few superlatives. You either have to write a book about Marek Żuławski or not. It's only out of necessity that I'm choosing the latter here.

This exhibition of Marek Żuławski's works will visit several major Polish cities - so it won't just be Warsaw audiences who will be able to experience moments of the most beautiful artistic emotions in front of his canvases.

It's worth remembering that, in 1946, Warsaw was still totally ruined.

The only reason that National Museum in Warsaw was putting on exhibitions and hadn't been destroyed was that it had been used during the war by the occupying Nazis. They had renamed it Museum der Stadt Warschau and were slowly stealing everything inside and sending it back to Germany.

In fact, with many of the nicer older buildings in Warsaw that are still standing,a you kind of have to thank the Germans for having the good taste to sit in them or loot them instead of dynamiting them... 🤷‍♂️

You can read about Marek's 1946 visit to Warsaw in the diaries I published as an ebook last year. Here it is on Amazon.

Article of the week

The 1946 review above comes from Przekrój, which is still going today but is now a lovingly-produced quarterly magazine. In recent years, Przekrój has also been producing a lot of original articles and translations in an online English version.

Here's one I like, a whimsical dreamy reflection on the childhood gardens of Poland's recent past:

That's it for this week. I am going back to my screaming child who doesn't see why I'm writing this newsletter at all. Thanks for reading.

Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / Procrastilearning.com / More stuff

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