Wanda and Józef Gosławski. The art of life

The exhibition considered the work of Wanda and Józef Gosławski in a period shaped by material scarcity. Shortage did not simply constrain their practice: it opened unexpected possibilities in the ordinary things that happened to be at hand. Christmas decorations fashioned from imported soap wrappers, carved wooden trinket boxes and unused spectacle frames belonged to the same inventive world.

Often impractical yet never superfluous, these objects joined art to everyday life. The variety of the couple's work, and the humour sustained through difficult circumstances, revealed a practice neither overtly political nor detached from the realities surrounding it.

Józef Gosławski's monument to Chopin, developed by the couple on a frosty New Year's Eve and later commissioned and unveiled in Żelazowa Wola in 1969, was placed in dialogue with smaller portraits of the composer, caricatures and works of applied art. These encounters explored the meanings that arise between the monumental and the intimate.