The Gallery of Polish Painting after the year 1945 is the first permanent display of  contemporary painting in the post-war history of the Silesian Museum in Katowice. The works hereby presented constitute a small part of the vast museum collection accumulated in Poland after World War II, comprising 585 items by artists representing different generations and artistic backgrounds. Its history goes back to the restitution of the museum in 1984. The acquisition of works of art created in earlier years was a challenge - thus, its representation is rather modest. The later years, especially the 1980s and also the early 90s, have received a much wider representation. The socio-political changes that occurred after the year 1989, economic transformation and the ensuing financial restrictions imposed on cultural centres caused a serious slowdown in expanding the collection over many years to come.

The idea behind the display was to continue and complement  the existing Gallery of Polish Painting 1800-1945 (its core collection was initiated in the 1930s) with the aim to document and highlight the most significant phenomena in the history of art after 1945. The collection  encompasses matter painting, geometric abstraction and emotional painting (Informel), Tashisme, metaphor painting, Neo-expressionism and Neo-figuration. Among them, there are works created by well-known artists as well as by those less recognised but definitely worthy of public attention and interest. It is by all means certain that the collection includes works of the most prominent artists who had the greatest impact on the shape and development of art at that time (among others, Andrzej Wróblewski, Tadeusz Kantor, Jerzy Nowosielski, Władysław Hasior, Edward Dwurnik, Jerzy Duda-Gracz).

The choice of works has also been influenced by such practical conditions as the exhibition space available in the Museum and the character of the existing collection. The display, though enclosed in the symbolic time brackets, is not strictly chronological and its main intention is to exemplify certain styles and trends in post-war art, which did not necessarily follow one another in a consistent manner, but rather according to the changing times and aesthetic values over the years.

The exhibition comes also as a harbinger of the future more extensive Gallery of the Polish Painting after 1945, which will soon find its new seat within the stately exhibition walls of the new building of the Silesian Museum in Katowice.

Curator of exhibition: Joanna Szeligowska-Farquhar