The Dziekanka Workshop collection created and preserved by Tomasz Sikorski collects documentation, primarily photos, from 1976-1987, filled with intense creative, research and educational activities in the Dziekanka. From 1976 Dziekanka functioned as the Students' Art Center (SCŚA), then in 1981 as Dziekanka Workshop (Pracownia Dziekanka) gained the status of a part of the Academy of Fine Arts. Throughout this time, Dziekanka combined artistic, research and educational activities. Formally oriented towards students of Warsaw art schools (fine art, musical and theater), in practice, it was more strongly associated with the neo-avant-garde movement than with academic didactics. It was a space of experiment, search, discussion, open both to debutants and recognized creators.
The history of the artistic Dziekanka dates back to 1972, when after events of March 1968, the self-educating group was established by Zygmunt Piotrowski and Ryszard Kryska, then students of graphic arts. Piotrowski turned to self-study work after the officials of the Ministry of Culture and Art rejected his revolutionary multimedia show Think communism. The performance refers to the workers' protests bloody suppressed in December of the previous year: it stigmatized the mistakes of the previous government and called for a return to the communist idea. However, it was perceived as too critical and consequently covered by censorship. Disappointed by the decisions of the authorities, Piotrowski soon set up a self-education group, later acting under the name of the Artistic and Research Studio of Artistic Universities in Warsaw (Studio A-B). In turn, Kryska in 1974 appointed the SAB group (Artistic-Research Studio group). For a short time, Zbigniew Warpechowski ran Gallery in 1973, but no exhibition took place, because the gallery's activity was discontinued with the liquidation of the Polish Students' Union at which it was affiliated.
On the basis of Studio A-B, Piotrowski turned to the Polish United Workers' Party at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1975 with a request to establish an Artistic Research Laboratory within the university structure, which would integrate different artistic disciplines, offering students the opportunity to experiment beyond the program of study. The application remained unanswered.
The changes were, however, carried out to Wojciech Krukowski, who in 1975 began to work in Dziekanka together with the neo-constructionist theater troupe Academy of Movement (Akademia Ruchu). Thanks to his efforts, the Students' Art Center was established at the same time, and the leader of Academy of Movement (Akademia Ruchu) became its head. Initially, Studio A-B, SAB group, and Academy of Movement co-existed with each other, and the program complemented film screenings about art and discussion meetings. Soon, the representatives of the national neo-avantgarde - Zdzisław Sosnowski, Ryszard Winiarski, Krzysztof Knittel, Wojciech Bruszewski, Jacek Malicki, and Andrzej Partum - began to present their works in Dziekanka as well as outstanding foreign creators such as Allan Kaprow, Douglas Davies, Peter Schumann and Shirley Cameron, Roland Miller and Wolf Kahlen.
Krukowski, looking for contacts with student circles, went out with the proposal of permanent activities in Dziekanka to three students of the Academy of Fine Arts: Janusz Bałdyga, Jerzy Onuch, and Łukasz Szajna. In 1976, they created the Dziekanka Workshop group, under which name they performed in the following years. The term "workshop" was an expression of an attitude towards a creative and technical process, different from both academic education and the typical exhibition model of independent galleries.
Two years later, Bałdyga and Onuch drew attention to the lack of interest of professors of art academies in the workshop, open forms of education that attracted the most active students to Dziekanka. Attempts to institutionalize this type of activity were unsuccessful, and the Dziekanka Workshop (Pracownia Dziekanka) itself ceased operations in about 1978, the last performance giving in early 1981.
For Academy of Movement (Akademia Ruchu), Dziekanka was a convenient place for rehearsals and preparations for performances and a starting point for action in the public space of Krakowskie Przedmieście and the Old Town (similarly to the SAB group). However, due to the professionalization of the theater in 1979, there was split with Dziekanka. The leadership of the SCŚA was taken over from Krukowski by Jerzy Onuch and Tomasz Sikorski. The first was a co-founder of Dziekanka Workshop and a student of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, the second co-director of the neo-avant-garde Gallery Mospan, and then Gallery P.O. Box 17 and a student of interior design at the Academy of Fine Arts.
Onuch and Sikorski quickly gave the Dziekanka a more laboratory and experimental character and opened it to new groups and people. In the years 1980-1981, Sikorski invited avant-garde artists from the Netherlands to Dziekanka, including Franklin Aalders, Johan Cornelissen, Boudewijn Payens and duet Reindeer Werk. On the wave of social uplift in the early eighties, thanks to new Dziekanka managers, with the help of Professor Ryszard Winiarski, the workshop became independent from the Socialist Union of Polish Students and incorporated into the structure of the Academy of Fine Arts (while maintaining the patronage of the Academy of Music). Strengthening the autonomy of the unit was accompanied by the announcement of its program referring to the activities of Dziekanka Workshop (Pracownia Dziekanka) and elaborated, among others, by its members - Onuch, Bałdyga, and Szajna - also for several years connected with Dziekanka Sikorski, Piotrowski, Janusz Banach, and Jacek Kryszkowski. Dziekanka has become a creative laboratory and an arena for confronting different methods, techniques, and viewpoints. In spite of the one-year-long closing of Dziekanka during martial law, the community that co-created it has not stopped working. Before the Dziekanka building was reopened at the end of 1982, the artists moved to the private studio of Daniel and Dorota Wnuk in Mokotów, where exhibitions and performances were held illegally in an unofficial atmosphere. In the 1980s, in Dziekanka made their debut creators of the Gruppa and Neue Bieriemiennost artistic groups, as well as Leon Tarasewicz. Rehearsals were played by punk bands TZN Xenna and Dezerter, whose manager, photographer Michał Wasążnik, worked there in the darkroom. With lectures, performances, and shows, they came from abroad Anne Seagrave, Alastair MacLennan, Iain Roberson, Tom Johnson, Phil Niblock, Servie Janssen, and Dick Higgins, and artists from Poland were no less often presented: Jerzy Truszkowski, the duet KwieKulik, Andrzej Mitan, Krzysztof Knittel, Jan Berdyszak, Zbigniew Libera and Zbigniew Warpechowski. Dozens of participants gathered in 1986 at the event Now and Beyond Time - a few days long conglomerate of discussions, lectures, shows, performances, concerts, and presentations on the relationship between art, science, and religion organized by Sikorski and Rypson.
In 1986 Jerzy Onuch left for the USA and Canada. After his departure, Tomasz Sikorski co-hosted Dziekanka together with Joanna Kiliszek (then a student of art history at the University of Warsaw), but in 1987 he went to the USA. From that time until 1992, Kiliszek, along with painter and draftsman Andrzej Rosołek, ran the studio under the changed name of Dziekanka Gallery (Galeria Dziekanka). In 1993, Krzysztof Żwirblis, a member of Academy of Movement (Akademia Ruchu) took over the gallery for three months. After him, the gallery was led by Krzysztof Wretowski - until its closure in 1998.
Although in the times of state socialism Dziekanka had very limited means to act, and the situation did not improve the lack of interest of the professors nor the ideological supervision of the SZSP, the institution enjoyed a relatively high degree of independence. As a marginal institution, censorship often overlooked it, thanks to which world-renowned creators were able to come from abroad, even though they did not receive permission to be shown in official galleries. Tomasz Sikorski and Jerzy Onuch wrote in an article from 2016:
"Events in Dziekanka, although open to the public, were advertised only by information sent by post, by telephone and by means of several posters displayed in permanent places. Due to its elitism and small scale of influence, absence from the media and thanks to the fact that Dziekanka did not exist in the official system of state institutions, its activity was not subjected to supervising or censorship control."
In the nineties Dziekanka gradually lost its former splendor, the gallery was closed in 1998 and the premises were taken over by a bank.
Sources:
Tomasz Sikorski, Pracownia Dziekanka 1976-1987, http://pracowniadziekanka.blogspot.com/;
Tomasz Sikorski, Free Energy, Mazowieckie Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Elektrownia, Radom 2017.
Dziekanka artystyczna. Fenomen kultury niezależnej na Krakowskim Przedmieściu w Warszawie 1972-1998, red. Joanna Kiliszek, Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie, Fundacja Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie, Warszawa 2017.
Pracownia Dziekanka 1976-1987, oprac. Tomasz Sikorski, Akademia Sztuk Pięknych, Warszawa 1990.
