Imagine the moment you visit your elderly aunt. She brings out tea and those iconic crispy biscuits you remember from your childhood. The porcelain tableware is decorated with pink flowers. There is a crochet tablecloth on the table, and lots of photographs and paintings cover the walls, being a tangible memoir. Granny finally sits next to you. And that’s when the story begins.
It may be safely assumed that many of us have experienced such a situation and are well familiar with the atmosphere of the moment described above. Similar impressions occurred while visiting the All This May Become Real exhibition and listening to the stories told by the curators, Dominika Górowska and Aleksandra Sikora. “We like it when people tell us that the exhibition is intimate and personal, as this is exactly what we were aiming at. We wanted to talk about the life of Wajda spouses, showcasing something that resembles a box full of souvenirs”, said Sikora.
Similar mindsets, mutual love
Organised as part of celebrations to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Manggha Museum, All This May Become Real tells the story of the institution’s founders, Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016) and Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda (b. 1930). With the story unravelling in seven parts, we are being taken on a journey through the couple’s private life, activities in various spheres of art, and their engagement in community life, to a description of their fascination with Japan and the establishment of the Museum.
“Guided by simplicity in our story about the Manggha’s founders, we wanted to account for the point of view of someone who comes here for the first time. The exhibition was intended to be narrative in its nature, but most of all, it was supposed to be educational as not many people are aware of the ties connecting Wajda spouses with the Museum”, the curators tell us. The exhibition presents two people joined by mutual love – for each other and for art and the culture of the Far East. However, even in the show’s title itself, the curators emphasised the very thing that Andrzej Wajda would say about his work that would not have been possible without the people around him. “My greatest advantage was to meet so many fantastic people who wanted the same thing as me, had a similar mindset, and had faith that all this can become real”. The exhibition becomes then a tribute to not only the director himself and his wife but also to everyone who contributed to their life’s work.
“My greatest advantage was to meet so many fantastic people who wanted the same thing as me, had a similar mindset, and had faith that all this can become real”
— Andrzej Wajda
Lives exhibited
But foremost, it is a prelude to the history of theatre, film, and other spheres of art in which the Wajdas were thriving. And the most intimate part of the experience is that we have a chance to learn about the most intriguing events in their life. There are photographs from family archives with young Andrzej surrounded by his closest family members and a cabinet filled with Krystyna’s mementoes from the Warsaw Uprising, where she served as a liaison officer under the pseudonym Czyżyk (Siskin). As such, the second we enter the exhibition space, a clear division is visible – the left side is dedicated to Andrzej with the right side being Krystyna’s space. Although their stories cross and merge a lot, of course.
“They worked and lived together for over forty years, so it is difficult to set all this apart”, Dominika Górowska notes. Such an exhibition concept serves one vital purpose – to shed light on Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda as apart from her husband and his shadow, allowing us to fully immerse in her story. Did you know she studied in Frycz’s atelier at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and specialised in creating stage designs and costumes? Before meeting Wajda, she was pursuing her acting career at the Piwnica pod Baranami, a famous Polish literary cabaret in Kraków, and briefly performed at a Polish experimental theatre, Cricot 2. The photographs from her shows are complemented by a recording of her voice made in Piwnica.
Still, the part focused on Andrzej Wajda’s plastic arts is fairly more extensive simply thanks to a greater number of source materials. Here, we can look deep into the eyes of a young man who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków for two years. When he came across the works of a Polish figurative painter Andrzej Wróblewski, he thought he would never be such a good artist and resigned from pursuing this path. After that, Wajda turned his artistic career trajectory towards directing, but he never gave up his way of seeing the world through images. “He used to sketch a lot on the move. He always had his sketchbook with him and would write everything down, taking notes from museums and compiling painting rankings”, Aleksandra Sikora points out and mentions the cabinet with Wajda’s sketchbooks. This showpiece allows us to enter the director’s extremely intimate world. Reading his notes takes us deep into his thoughts and views on the reality around him.
The paths of performance
Wajda staged over forty theatre plays. The curatorial text alone managed to list most of the plays he made, making us realise that Andrzej Wajda was not only a great film director but was also an accomplished stage director. “It is a rather small space [within the exhibition] where we decided to showcase not so much photos from performances, but photos of Wajda at work in the theatre”, Dominika Górowska explains. The Theatre section has also a recording from Biesy directed by Wajda in 1971 – a true gem, as Górowska stresses further, it was a rarity to record performances at the time. Here, the paths of Andrzej and Krystyna cross. She prepared the stage design for the play – that is how they met.
The photos from selected shows with Zachwatowicz’s stage design are there to explore, too, including the ones of original costumes from Biesy. We learn more about Krystyna as a profoundly prolific and visionary artist who created 140 stage designs and worked with such renowned figures as Jerzy Jarocki, Konrad Swiniarski, Krystyna Skuszanka, and Jerzy Krasowski. A close look at costume designs can be taken here, as well. The Japanese context cannot be forgotten while walking down the paths of the Wajdas life. The costume and stage design for Kazimierz Kord’s adaptation of Madame Butterfly at the Miejski Teatr Muzyczny – Opera i Operetka in Kraków (currently the Opera Krakowska) is definitely a highlight worth a longer contemplation. It was when working on these designs in 1969 that Zachwatowicz came across the collections of Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński, a Polish art critic and collector, for the first time.
To say anything that hasn’t been already said about Andrzej Wajda as a film director is a considerable challenge. “We did something rather unexpected here, devoting only a little space to film but focusing also on showcasing Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda as an actress”, Dominika Górowska reveals as there are film fragments featuring Krystyna in Katyń and Man of Marble. Additionally, photos of Wajda from film sets, the Ashes and Diamonds script with Wajda’s drawings on it, and his written Academy Awards speech are there, too, to complement his artistic lifetime achievements.
However, the curators also pay attention to Man of Iron. “As Wajda put it, it was the only film he ever made on request. He was asked for it by a shipyard worker”, Górowska adds when discussing a small yet significant section. Here, we can explore photographs – from the culture congress, from the unveiling of the shipyard workers’ monument, and a photo of Andrzej Wajda as a Senate candidate representing Solidarność. In the cabinet – a display of Krystyna’s Solidarity Medal. All of this, to showcase even more meticulously the people the Wajdas have been.
“We did something rather unexpected here, devoting only a little space to film but focusing also on showcasing Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda as an actress”
— Dominika Górowska
Home for Japanese tales
Finally, we learn how Japan came to Wajdas’ life and how it led to the museum’s establishment. We already know when Krystyna was first acquainted with Jasieński’s collection. At that time, Wajda was long familiar with it. Jasieński’s works were shown in 1944 by Germans at the Cloth Hall (Sukiennice) in Kraków. “Wajda went to the exhibition, disregarding the risk of being arrested or even killed”, Aleksandra Sikora says. He was utterly thrilled and couldn’t possibly know at the time that over forty years later he would be granted the Kyoto Prize, Japan’s highest private award for lifetime achievement in the arts and sciences.
The award instantly prompted the couple to make it an opportunity to create a place for Jasieński’s collection. The prize money was allocated for the establishment, while along with the idea of “all this may become real”, the remaining part of the funds was raised thanks to the help of generous people. In 1994, fifty years after Wajda had seen Manggha’s works for the first time, the extraordinary institution was opened. Today, the Manggha Museum plays a key role in popularising Japanese art in not only Kraków but the whole country.
All This May Become Real is an intimate journey through the story of two loving people who worked together. The visit to this incredibly fascinating world is like the Museum itself – not like any other.
All This May Become Real (To wszystko da się zrealizować) is available to visit till March 9th in Manggha Museum in Kraków.
Supported by Manggha Museum.
