Revolutionary Artists 2021

The series ‘Revolutionary Artists’ presents portraits of the backs of paintings coming from the International Collection of Modern Art at Muzeum Sztuki. Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź is one of the oldest museums of modern art in the world. The Museum’s connections with the avant-garde date back to the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, when a group of radical artists from the “a.r.” group began gathering works of the most important artists of the day for the Museum. The action met with great interest of European avant-garde, making many outstanding artists, such as Fernand Leger, Max Ernst, Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters to donate their works to the collection. The fact made the collection of the “a.r.” group a unique symbol of solidarity and cooperation of the avant-garde. The International Modern Art. Collection of the “a.r.” group, representing the main directions of art. such as Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Purism, Neoplasticism and Surrealism was open to public on 15th February 1931. The collection has since been consistently expanded by including international modern and contemporary artworks. Due to this fact Muzeum Sztuki is now the only museum in Poland with such extensive collection of world art of the 20th and 21st century. The creation of the Łódź collection is a worldwide phenomenon.

Dramatically lit and shot against a dark backdrop, the paintings are enveloped with moths and other insects crawling across their surfaces as they recall the tradition of vanitas paintings – prompting the inevitable mutations of ideology and socio-political memory; evoking the symbolic power of cultural capital. The stickers on the back evident all the exhibitions where the works have traveled, and how their status of a retribution gift circumnavigated the world.