‘Young Poland’ exhibit travels to Kyoto featuring over 150 works from Polish modernists

The National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto is set to host an exhibition titled Young Poland, showcasing more than 150 works from Poland’s late 19th and early 20th-century modernist movement, including paintings, drawings, prints, and decorative art.

Olga Boznańska, Girl with Chrysanthemums, oil on cardboard, 1894.

MNK

Key pieces by Olga Boznańska, Jacek Malczewski, and Włodzimierz Tetmajer — on loan from the National Museum in Kraków (MNK) — are among the works traveling to Japan. In their place, visitors to MNK’s Gallery of 20th- and 21st-Century Polish Art can view alternative paintings by Boznańska, Malczewski, and others.

Spotlight on symbolism and Japanese influence

Set to run from March 25 to June 29, the Kyoto exhibition will explore how late 19th- and early 20th-century Polish artists — often inspired by Japanese art — pursued impressionism, symbolism, and the search for a distinct national style.

Organizers note that, despite Poland’s absence on political maps at the time, Polish art thrived on European salons, helping shape national identity.

Visitors will see notable pieces like Tetmajer’s The Artist’s Family, Leon Wyczółkowski’s Stańczyk, Józef Pankiewicz’s Woman Combing Her Hair, Malczewski’s Portrait of Feliks Jasieński, and Boznańska’s Girl with Chrysanthemums and Flower Girls.

The exhibition coincides with Poland’s presence at Expo 2025 in Osaka.

(jh)

Source: PAP