Polish émigré artists and a neglected chapter in the story of British art

What nearly all of Polish émigré artists, who feature in Pole Position: Polish Art in Britain 1939 - 1989 at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield, had in common 'is that they practised Expressionism of one kind or another.'

There is frequently in their work 'a violence of colour': 'The specifically religious paintings, such as [Henryk] Gotlib's Christ in Warsaw, [Janina] Baranowska's Crucifixion, and [Marian] Bohusz-Szyszko's Christ Crowned with Thorns are all on the anguished side of Christian art; the last two agonise in brilliant, almost hellish colour, though the Gotlib, significantly dated 1940, uses his characteristic more muted range of colours to express complex emotions about the occupied city.'

My earlier posts about this group of artists can be found here, here and here.

Baranowska was a member of the Catholic and Christian Artists group. She designs stained glass windows and has been awarded  several prizes for painting and stained glass. The latter can be seen in St Andrzej Bobola’s Church in London and in Holy Trinity Church in Wolverhampton.

One of the greatest and most prolific Polish émigré artists who was commissioned by the Catholic Church in the UK is not featured in this exhibition:

'For the Catholic church, the most significant postwar ceramicist was Adam Kossowski (1905-86), a Polish artist and refugee from the Russian labour camps, who came to Britain in 1942. He was soon invited to join the Guild of Catholic Artists and Craftsmen, which had been founded in 1929 as part of the centenary celebrations of Catholic emancipation; it is now known as the Society of Catholic Artists. Although firstly a mural painter, he showed some ceramic figures at the Guild’s 1947 exhibition, and through the Guild was introduced to the Carmelite Priory - now the Friars - at Aylesford in Kent. 

He was initially commissioned to produce a series of paintings depicting the history of the Carmelite order, and then asked to make a Rosary Way (1950) in ceramics. At that time Kossowski was relatively inexperienced in ceramics, and had only a small kiln in his studio, but after some hesitation he accepted the commission, and worked with the Fulham Pottery which could fire the large pieces that comprised the final Scapular Vision shrine (1951) ...

He was a prolific artist, and Aylesford was only a part of his huge ceramic and other output over the period 1955-71, which included seven ceramic sets of Stations of the Cross and the 1958 tympanum of St Thomas Becket at Rainham in Kent ...

One of his greatest works is the gigantic Last Judgement tympanum of 1963 at St Mary’s Church in

Leyland, Lancashire; Christ the Judge is depicted in the centre, with the saved to his right and the devils and the condemned to his left ...

He also worked on a large scale in sgraffito, the best example being in London at St Benedict’s Chapel, Queen Mary College (1964) ...

Kossowski’s is a magnificent body of work, but it is hard to say how influential his ceramics were; they were generally figurative when abstract art had become popular, they were located throughout Britain and thus hard to find and received little publicity, they were seen perhaps as being relevant only to the Catholic church, religiously inspired and not gallery art or high art.'

Polish émigré artists continue to paint with 'a violence of colour.' Maciej Hoffman, for example, paints huge expressionist canvases depicting scenes of trauma. His paintings depict the distress caused through conflict and he seeks to use his art to generate discussion among people of all faiths and none about the causes of conflict.

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Henryk Górecki: Totus Tuus.