COURAGE

Підключення Колекцій

The photo collection on graffiti in Poland has been gathered by Tomasz Sikorski since about 1970. The great part of the approximately 1 500 photos was made in years 1970-1990. Sikorski has been up-to-date documenting the paintings occurring on the walls of Polish cities, both artistic and dominated by the political message, created by professionals as well as people without artistic background. On his photographies, one can see works by, among others, Włodzimierz Fruczek, Faustyn Chełmecki, „Major” Waldemar Fydrych”, Jacek „Ponton” Jankowski, Alexander Sikora, Krzysztof Skarbek and Sikorski himself.

The collection contains mainly documentation, primarily photographic, of the Mospan Gallery operating in the years 1976-1978 at the Mospan Club at Warsaw University of Technology. Initially, it was run by Tomasz Sikorski, and then by Sikorski together with Tomasz Konart. The gallery during three years of its existence was one of few independent places (together with Gallery Remont and Repassage) of presentation neo-avant-garde art in Warsaw. The profile of the Mospan Gallery focused on ephemeral works, meetings, performances, not permanent objects, and therefore archive contains mostly pictures from current events that used to take places there.

The collection presents photos and other documentation of the annual activity of Gallery P.O. Box 17, run by Tomasz Sikorski and Tomasz Konart from the beginning of 1979 to November of the same year. This gallery was a continuation of the activities of the Mospan Gallery, closed in December 1978. It had no localization - it only had a mailbox. Gallery, by courtesy, were using the space of Dziekanka Students' Art Center and Stodoła Club. At the same time, Sikorski and Konart planned to use the form of mail art. The collection, preserved and developed by Sikorski, is a unique testimony, characteristic for neo-avant-garde art in Poland in the late 1970s.

The collection stores about 250 photos made by Tomasz Sikorski during the Fifth Biennial of Spatial Forms known as Kino Laboratorium (Cinema Laboratory), in 1973. The pictures documented the 1973’s sculptures, objects, and performances, as well as artworks created in the earlier years. There are also some photos from 1972 when Sikorski came to Elbląg to document the preparations for the event. The Biennial, organized in Elbląg from 1965, was one of the crucial neo-avantgarde events in Poland. Cinema Laboratory was the last edition of Biennial in Elbląg; soon after its end Gerard Blum-Kwiatkowski, initiator and founder of the event, moved abroad to Germany.

The photographies from the Tomislav Peternek collection at the Museum for Contemporary Art in Belgrade document scenes of significant historical protests and conflicts between people and the police in socialist Yugoslavia. In addition to the photographers outstanding faculties in aesthetic terms, the photographies are examples of the modernist current that have intersected with photographic socrealism. The photo from the series "Red University" [Crveni univerzitet] was part of a significant exhibition held at the Belgrade Youth Center [Domu omladine Beograda] right after the end of student protests in Belgrade in 1968 despite the high risk to be threatened by the authorities and the police.