Grabowski Gallery

The Grabowski Gallery was an avant-garde art gallery opened in 1959 in London's Chelsea by Mateusz Grabowski, anticipating the Swinging Sixties.[1] It hosted some of the earliest shows of the rising pop art movement and was the first venue in London to bring op art to the public.[2] It launched the careers of some of Britain's and the British Commonwealth's leading exponents of two- and three-dimensional art[3][4] and fostered émigré artists from Europe, the Caribbean and the Commonwealth.[5] By the time it closed its doors in 1975 it had mounted around two hundred shows. When the gallery closed Mateusz Grabowski donated his collection of works from the gallery to the Museum of Art in Łódź and the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland.[6]

Grabowski Gallery
Formation1959
Dissolved1975
TypeArt gallery
Legal statusdefunct
Purposecontemporary art exhibitions
Location
Coordinates51.4934°N 0.1682°W / 51.4934; -0.1682
Founded by
Mateusz Grabowski

History

Founded in 1959, the gallery started as a sideline of the Polish émigré pharmacist, Mateusz Grabowski (1904-1976), who had arrived in the United Kingdom as an officer of the Polish Armed Forces in 1940.[7] After demobilisation in the late 1940s following the Second World War, Grabowski formed a pharmaceutical business, having worked as a pharmacist in Warsaw before the war.[8] His innovation in London was to create a mail order chemist to enable Polish and other resettled Central Europeans in Britain and in other parts of the Free World during the Cold War to send badly needed medicines and medical supplies to their families and friends in countries under Soviet occupation where there were persistent shortages of many everyday goods. His successful business allowed him eventually to indulge his youthful passion for art, first as a collector and subsequently as a patron, by opening a gallery next to one of his chemist outlets at 84 Sloane Avenue in Chelsea. It was an avowedly non-commercial venture. He reputedly mounted exhibitions in exchange for an artwork by the artist.[9] One of its earliest shows was a group exhibition of established Polish artists.[10]

Exhibitions

The gallery became known as a pioneer of group and solo shows of recent art school graduates, including graduates of the nearby Royal College of Art, as well as artists from the British Commonwealth and established Polish émigré artists.[11] Grabowski was aided by art specialists from Poland, including the leading British Polish-born curator and critic Jasia Reichardt and the artist Stanisław Frenkiel.[12][13] Exhibition themes and titles included Image in Progress, Image in Revolt, Inner Image to MAD - Conroy Maddox and Tomorrow's Artists. Among the exhibitors were:

Oliver Bevan Both Ways, 1965

Several of the gallery's exhibition catalogues from 1959 onwards are in the Special Collections of Leeds University Library, including catalogues for exhibitions by Ivor Abrahams, Michael Sandle and Michael Rothenstein.[18] The Grabowski was one of several noted contemporary art exhibition spaces initiated by émigré Poles in London. Others were Halima Nałęcz's Drian Galleries in Bayswater, Jan Wieliczko's Centaur Gallery and, longest established, Feliks Topolski's studio and exhibition in Waterloo.

References
  1. Adams, Ken; Saciuk-Gąsowska, Anna; Kurc, Paulina; Grochulska, Agnieszka; et al. (2007). Swingujący Londyn : kolekcja Grabowskiego [Swinging London : collection of Grabowski] (in Polish and English). Łódź: Łódź Muzeum Sztuki. OCLC 233467130.
  2. Stępień, Justyna (2015). British Pop Art and Postmodernism. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-4438-8294-1.
  3. Chambers, Eddie (2014). Black Artists in British Art: A History since the 1950s. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8577-2409-0.
  4. Grayson Ford, Sue (2019). "Foreword to Brave New Visions: The Émigrés who transformed the British Art World" (PDF). Insider/Outsider Festival. p. 7. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  5. "Diaspora Artists". new.diaspora-artists.net. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  6. "Gifted by Mateusz Grabowski". Łódź: Muzeum Sztuki. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
  7. Dymarczyk, Iwona (2005). "A Polish Pharmacist, Mateusz Bronisław Grabowski as the Owner of an Art Gallery in London (1959-1975)" (PDF). People and Places, 37th International Congress for the History of Pharmacy 22nd June – 25th June 2005 University of Edinburgh Scotland. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
  8. Dymarczyk I. Polskie organizacje farmaceutyczne w Wielkiej Brytanii w latach 1943-1949 [Polish pharmaceutical organisations in Great Britain in the years 1943-1949]. Arch Hist Filoz Med. 2000; 63(3-4):122‐126.
  9. Hassell, Geoff. "Artists Biographies". www.artbiogs.co.uk. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
  10. Borkowski, Andrzej Maria. "History of APA". Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain (1957). Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  11. Roberts, Keith. “London.” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 106, no. 732, 1964, pp. 137–142. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/874263. Accessed 1 June 2020.
  12. Reichardt, Jasia. "Inner Image - Works by the Leicester Group". Grabowski Gallery. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  13. "Exhibition Histories Talks: Jasia Reichardt". www.afterall.org. 2014. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  14. Corbett, David Peters; Arnold, Dana, eds. (2016). A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present. Blackwell Companions to Art History. John Wiley & Sons. p. 167. ISBN 9781119170112.
  15. A posthumous tribute to the gallery owner's artist son who died at the age of just thirty. The January 1970 catalogue was written by Stanisław Frenkiel.
  16. "Jasia Reichardt - An Art Archive: Twenty Years of Correspondence, H-L" (PDF). The Getty Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. Retrieved 1 June 2020. (Reference to Hambling's show at Grabowski, "A space at five times", shared with McEwen and Biggin in January 1970).
  17. "Mateusz B. Grabowski requests the pleasure of your company at the private view of an exhibition "Image in Progress". Derek Boshier, David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Max Shepard, Norman Toynton, Brian Wright. Grabowski Gallery, London on Tuesday 14th August 1962 from 5.30 p.m. to 8 p.m." Grabowski Gallery. 1962. Retrieved 30 May 2020. Grabowski Gallery Invitation card to an exhibition on sale (with illustration) at an online bookshop.
  18. "Grabowski Gallery, catalogues of various art shows". Retrieved 26 May 2020.

Further reading
  • Sienkiewicz, Jan Wiktor (2003). Polskie galerie sztuki w Londynie w drugiej połowie XX wieku [Polish Art Galleries in London in the Second Half of the 20th c.] (in Polish). Lublin-London. ISBN 83-227-2071-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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