The celebrations opened with the screening of a documentary about Julian Stańczak, an internationally acclaimed Polish painter who spent the best part of his life in the United States.
Directed by Tomasz Magierski and entitled Stańczak: To Catch the Light, the film draws on archival photographs and film clips, including from the collection of the Piłsudski Institute, to recount the artist’s remarkable life.
Stańczak was born in Poland in 1928. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, he forced into a Siberian labour camp, where he lost the use of his right arm.
In 1942, he escaped from Siberia to join a Polish army led by Gen. Władysław Anders. In later years, Stańczak lived in a Polish refugee camp in Uganda, where he learned to use his left hand, and subsequently in London, before moving to the United States in 1950.
Stańczak was a pioneering abstract artist whose 1964 exhibition Optical Paintings in New York prompted Time magazine to coin the term op art. He taught at the Cleveland Institute of Art for over three decades. He died in 2017.
The Piłsudski Institute, founded on July 4, 1943, is named after the former Polish military leader and statesman who played a key role in Poland defeating Soviet Russia more than a century ago.
It was established by a group of Piłsudski’s friends and leaders of the Polish community in the United States.
The institute's collection comprises about 1 million documents, some 18,000 books, as well as photographs, maps and medals relating to Polish history.
The Piłsudski Institute’s art gallery includes works by Polish masters such as Jan Matejko, Stanisław Wyspiański, Leon Wyczółkowski, Aleksander Gierymski, Józef Mehoffer and Juliusz Kossak.
(mk/gs)