P o czet dziek anó w - Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Gdańsku

E L Ż B I E T A K A L
realism, the changes connected with the reform of education, announced and motivated
through the exhibition of artistic schools of Poznań in autumn 1949 were to come.
The impact of the exhibition was easy to predict: the existing “formalistic” methods of teaching
needed to be adjusted to the official tenet according to which the artistic creation
was a part of a propaganda system. Janusz Bogucki, who repeatedly condemned the
methods of the postimpressionistic school, and called colorist-professors “workshopers”,
wrote in one of his articles:
I can see no artistic justification for the persistent construction of odalisques and sad puppets
in colorful scarves, living among bottles, drapery and guitars to be further supported
in artistic academies against the theory and the form of the true phenomena, of which
the real world is full today.
The reform was meant to transform the “formalistic” methods of teaching applied by
“theoreticians of kapism”; the number of hours of drawing that aimed at the preparation
to create the most desirable polyfigure composition with suitable ideological contents
was increased, among others; and system of the studios managed by the masters was
abolished, replaced by the division according to the year of studies. One of the aims of
the reform was also the limitation of “pure” disciplines of creation and the expansion of
the “applied” disciplines which were viewed as more useful in a socialist state. Thereof
resulted the idea of limiting the teaching of painting and sculpture to only two centers,
namely the academies of Kraków and Warszawa. The remaining academies were to deal
with the specializations that could be used by the industry: in Łódź - fabric, in Poznań
- furniture making, in Wrocław - ceramics. The limitation of the realization of this idea at
the State College of Fine Arts in Sopot “only” to the termination of the Department of
Sculpture, and thus the rescue of the painter’s education was attributed to the providence
of foreseeing educators by Stanisław Teisseyre, who had just taken up a position of the
Rector for many following years.
In this critical moment - related Teisseryre years later – the exhibition called “The Youth
Fight for Peace” was announced. The reform was held in the 1950s, in autumn. In the beginning
of the 1950s, when the exhibition was announced, the students did not show any
desire to prepare for it. Marian Wnuk and me, we knew instantly that socrealism was to be
introduced, that if we wanted to defend sculpture and painting in Gdańsk region, we had
to persuade the students to take part in this exhibition. We explained this to them in the
Sopot Grand Hotel over vodka. We said that there was no need to change thoroughly. We
should try to combine the pictorial and sculptural values with the thematic approach. […]
And suddenly during this exhibition our students took most of the prizes - and now this
Mangelowa, who makes the reform, and Sokorski: how could we close the painting and
sculpture at this Academy of Sopot, when they took most of the prizes? And they left it to
us, they made an exception and they left it. This compromise formula saved our Academy
were the reason for painting to be the most important area of its activity. Already in
the 1940s, when there were only two departments, of painting and of architecture, the
first one was more prominent, which showed, among others, in the number of studios
– including fresco technique - managed by experienced masters, who were recognized
by the media and rewarded for their extramural activities (local, national, and sometimes
international exhibitions). It also showed in the non-painting undertakings of the creators
of the Academy connected with the painful process of the post-war reconstruction, and
also with the politics that started to be more and more oppressive at that time.
Gradually painting started to function also in a mythical dimension, to which it had been
transferred by the remembrance of the concurrent artistic strategy of pupils and continuers,
together with their convictions regarding superiority and modernity of the colourist
conception of painting, with its main task of creating a colourful construction based
on the study of nature; together with their care about workshop perfection and their
reluctance towards extreme solutions, as well as to the words bringing an extra-artistic
context into the art of painting.
Graphic arts were shifted to the interior position by the so understood assignments of education
and, what is even more important – together with some different subjects taught
within the frames of the Department of Painting, namely ceramic arts and artistic fabric
- it was regulated by the same esthetical categories and references to the discussion
about art with it’s idea of autonomy, the impassable rights of painting, the superiorities
of “pictorial value”, etc.
The character of the Academy and its unique position within the Gdańsk region – as observed
by Elżbieta Zakrzewska - were visible even in the early period of its activity. The
studios of painting, drawing and sculpture were most important and they were the basis
of the education process. Other workshops were being created as a result of the development,
as well as the adaptation to practical assignments of the disciplines of architectural
painting and applied graphic arts. Even the weaving department at the State College of
Fine Arts came as a form of monumental painting.
The author also states, referring to the characteristic remark of Józefa Wnukowa (“I was
never interested in weaving alone. I treat fabrics as decorative painting”) who said that
“paining is probably one of the basic features of many Sopot fabrics”.
The Department of Paintings and Graphic Arts underwent numerous transformations in
the sixty-year-old history of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. And although numerous
fusions and divisions were being executed, the structural domination of painting
remained to be observed. Initially, painting was a part of the Department of Painting
and Architecture, but after the transformation of the latter into a separate Department
of Interior Architecture, painting formed another department together with decorative
designing, under the management of Juliusz Studnicki. Soon, at the threshold of socialist