Motifs: Krystyna Szczepanowska-Miklaszewska

Motifs: Krystyna Szczepanowska-Miklaszewska

Opening: 6 September 2024, 7:00 pm
Exhibition: 7 September–13 October 2024
Arton Foundation
Foksal 11/4, Warsaw

Curator: Marika Kuźmicz
Cooperation: Sunniva Szczepanowska-Lay and Adam Parol
Display, visual identity: Łukasz Izert

“She shaped her environment, and radiated widely.” This is how Magdalena Abakanowicz recalled Krystyna Szczepanowska-Miklaszewska. Despite the nearly 20-year age difference between them, they studied together at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.

Krystyna Szczepanowska was born in Borysław, Poland (now Boryslav, Ukraine), and spent her childhood and youth in Lwów (Lviv). Her first weaving instructors were her aunts Eleonora Plutyńska and Wanda Szczepanowska. Krystyna then studied at Lwów’s polytechnic and institute of fine arts (1934–1939). She also completed a degree at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1961, when it proved necessary for her to hold a diploma issued in the Polish People’s Republic.

Raised in a patriotic Polish family with artistic and scholarly traditions, Krystyna rescued numerous family heirlooms, including artworks, from wartime destruction. She was the last caretaker of the Szczepanowski home in Lwów, and when the home was seized by the staff of the Red Army, she led the evacuation.

She reached Warsaw, where she joined the underground, and then, under the pseudonym “Klementyna,” fought in the Warsaw Uprising (unarmed, as she always stressed). After the uprising was put down, she was imprisoned at the Lamsdorf POW camp, and later at Zeithain. There, despite the tough conditions, she organized lectures for her fellow prisoners on art history and literature. When the camp was liberated, she returned to Warsaw. She was connected with the capital for the rest of her life, dividing her time between Warsaw and Zakopane, where she worked as the artistic director of the Peasant Self-Help Cooperative, forerunner of the local Cepelia workshop. Her duties there included designing and overseeing production of textiles. At that time she studied the traditional folk motifs from the mountainous Podhale region and adapted them for production for contemporary decorative textiles. When she returned to Warsaw in 1950, the workshop was headed by Maria Bujakowa, whom Szczepanowska knew from her time in Lwów. She continued to pursue her interest in the art of Podhale, working with Wanda Telakowska at the Industrial Design Institute (1950–1957).

Szczepanowska-Miklaszewska was also a teacher. She taught at the vocational school in Zakopane (which later became the Helena Modrzejewska Technical School of Artistic Weaving), where she created the curriculum for textile technicians, and also developed the theoretical foundation for manufacturing kilims at Cepelia.

Meanwhile, throughout her professional career, Szczepanowska-Miklaszewska also designed unique, one-off textile pieces. Transposing folk motifs, mainly from Podhale, she created abstract and even metaphorical textile forms. Her works were shown at numerous exhibitions in Poland and abroad, and won many prizes.

The artist’s archive also reveals Szczepanowska-Miklaszewska to have been a talented illustrator and graphic artist. The exhibition at the Arton Foundation inaugurates the elaboration and digitization of this resource.

Subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Fund for Promotion of Culture
Project co-financed by the City of Warsaw