Janina Musiałczyk. W drodze, on the road

Janina Musiałczyk was born in Kraśnik in 1943. From 1947 onwards, she spent the rest of her childhood years growing up in Łódź, before studying at the State Higher School of Visual Arts (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Sztuk Plastycznych), now known as the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts Łódź (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych im. Władysława Strzemińskiego w Łodzi), from 1961–67. From 1967–81, she ran the group of studios dedicated to the fine arts in the Palace of Youth (Pałac Młodzieży) in Łódź. In 1981, a few months before the imposition of martial law, she left Poland, emigrating to Hamburg via Sweden. In 1985, together with Renate Schröder, she founded a private art school in Hamburg, which she headed until 2000. From 1969–2021, she showed her work in around 30 solo exhibitions in Poland, Switzerland and Germany, 22 of which were in Hamburg, and was involved in a further 20 group exhibitions. The online exhibition shown here presents 99 works from 1974–2022. The introductory text is followed by words from people who have accompanied her on her journey.

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Fig. 1: “Meetings on the Road” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 35, 1995

Fig. 2: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 20, 1984

Fig. 3: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 21, 1984

Fig. 4: “Divided Landscape, Created Landscape” (Geteilte Landschaft, gestaltete Landschaft) 19, 1983

Fig. 5: “On the Road” (Unterwegs) 13, 1996

Fig. 6: “On the Road” (Unterwegs) 1, 1996

Fig. 7: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 8, 1986

Fig. 8: “People, Borders, Landscapes” (Menschen, Grenzen, Landschaften) 30, 1986

Fig. 9: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 25, 1984

Fig. 10: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 10, 1986

Fig. 11: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 11, 1986

Fig. 12: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 22, 1984

Fig. 13: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 23, 1984

Fig. 14: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 24, 1984

Fig. 15: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 18, 1983

Fig. 16: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 6, 1986

Fig. 17: “Departure, Exodus” (Fortgang, Exodus) 13, 2000

Fig. 18: “Meetings on the Road (II)” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 3, 1999

Fig. 19: “Meetings on the Road (II)” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 2, 2000

Fig. 20: “Meetings on the Road (II)” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 3, 2000

Fig. 21: “Meetings on the Road (III)” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 3, 2013

Fig. 22: “People, Borders, Landscapes” (Menschen, Grenzen, Landschaften) 4, 1988

Fig. 23: “Meetings on the Road (II)” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 6, 1998

Fig. 24: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 23, 1984

Fig. 25: “The Earth” (Die Erde) 5, 1974

Fig. 26: “The Earth” (Die Erde) 6, 1974

Fig. 27: “Together” (Zusammen) 6, 2000

Fig. 28: “Together” (Zusammen) 8, 2000

Fig. 29: “Together” (Zusammen) 4, 2000

Fig. 30: “It Teeters (II)” (Es taumelt) 3, 2001

Fig. 31: “It Teeters (II)” (Es taumelt) 6, 2000

Fig. 32: “Coming, Becoming, Going” (Kommen, werden, gehen) 28, 1993

Fig. 33: “Coming, Becoming, Going” (Kommen, werden, gehen) 21, 1993

Fig. 34: “Coming, Becoming, Going” (Kommen, werden, gehen) 13, 1993

Fig. 35: “Coming, Becoming, Going” (Kommen, werden, gehen) 20, 1993

Fig. 36: “Coming, Becoming, Going” (Kommen, werden, gehen) 15, 1993

Fig. 37: “Coming, Becoming, Going” (Kommen, werden, gehen) 12, 1993

Fig. 38: “Coming, Becoming, Going” (Kommen, werden, gehen) 29, 1993

Fig. 39: “Coming, Becoming, Going” (Kommen, werden, gehen) 30, 1993

Fig. 40: “It Teeters” (Es taumelt) 5, 1995

Fig. 41: “It Teeters” (Es taumelt) 4, 1995

Fig. 42: “Coming, Becoming, Going” (Kommen, werden, gehen) 27, 1993

Fig. 43: “Rented Rooms” (Mieträume) 4, 1998

Fig. 44: “It Teeters” (Es taumelt) 21, 1996

Fig. 45: “Departure, Exodus” (Fortgang, Exodus) 23, 2000

Fig. 46: “Departure, Exodus” (Fortgang, Exodus) 41, 2000

Fig. 47: “Departure, Exodus” (Fortgang, Exodus) 18, 2000

Fig. 48: “Departure, Exodus” (Fortgang, Exodus) 40, 2000

Fig. 49: “Departure, Exodus” (Fortgang, Exodus) 61, 2000

Fig. 50: “Meetings on the Road (III)” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 8, 2011

Fig. 51: “Meetings on the Road (III)” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 12, 2012

Fig. 52: “Meetings on the Road (II)” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 14, 1998

Fig. 53: “Meetings on the Road (II)” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 17, 1998

Fig. 54: “It Teeters” (Es taumelt) 36, 1995

Fig. 55: “Here and There” (Hier und dort) 8, 1985

Fig. 56: “From Here to There” (Von hier bis dort) 3, 1996

Fig. 57: “From Here to There” (Von hier bis dort) 2, 1996

Fig. 58: “Coming, Becoming, Going (II)” (Kommen, werden, gehen) 39, 1998

Fig. 59: “It Teeters” (Es taumelt) 7, 1995

Fig. 60: “Meetings on the Road” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 12, 1995

Fig. 61: “Journeys” (Auf Reisen) 23, 2000

Fig. 62: “Meetings on the Road (II)” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 29, 2000

Fig. 63: “On the Road” (Unterwegs) 9, 1998

Fig. 64: “Ghosts and Houses” (Geister und Häuser) 13, 2015

Fig. 65: “Ghosts and Houses” (Geister und Häuser) 3, 2015

Fig. 66: “Ghosts and Houses” (Geister und Häuser) 16, 2015

Fig. 67: “Meetings on the Road” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 22, 1996

Fig. 68: “Meetings on the Road” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 24, 1996

Fig. 69: “Meetings on the Road” (Begegnungen unterwegs) 37, 1995

Fig. 70: “People, Borders, Landscapes” (Menschen, Grenzen, Landschaften) 5, 1988

Fig. 71: “People, Borders, Landscapes” (Menschen, Grenzen, Landschaften) 6, 1988

Fig. 72: “People, Borders, Landscapes” (Menschen, Grenzen, Landschaften) 1, 1990

Fig. 73: “People, Borders, Landscapes” (Menschen, Grenzen, Landschaften) 5, 1987

Fig. 74: "’81” 13, 1981

Fig. 75: “For the Boy” (Für den Jungen) 38, 2000

Fig. 76: “For the Boy” (Für den Jungen) 32, 1998

Fig. 77: “For the Boy” (Für den Jungen) 35, 1998

Fig. 78: “Onwards” (Weiter) 15, 2021

Fig. 79: “Steps (II)” (Stufen) 9, 2019

Fig. 80: “Steps” (Stufen) 41, 2006

Fig. 81: “Steps (II)” (Stufen) 03, 2019

Fig. 82: “Steps” (Stufen) 7, 2009

Fig. 83: “Steps” (Stufen) 41, 2006

Fig. 84: “Steps” (Stufen) 41, 2006

Fig. 85: “Departure, Exodus” (Fortgang, Exodus) 44, 2002

Fig. 86: “Rented Rooms” (Mieträume) 35, 2002

Fig. 87: “Steps” (Stufen) 33, 2006

Fig. 88: “Episodes” (Episoden) A, 2000–2017

Fig. 89: “Episodes” (Episoden) B, 2000–2017

Fig. 90: “Episodes” (Episoden) C, 2000–2017

Fig. 91: “Episodes” (Episoden) D, 2000–2017

Fig. 92: “Episodes” (Episoden) E, 2000–2017

Fig. 93: “I Don’t See It, so It Isn’t There” (Seh nicht, also ist nicht) 1/2, 2022

Fig. 94: “I Don’t See It, so It Isn’t There” (Seh nicht, also ist nicht) 3/4, 2022

Fig. 95: “I Don’t See It, so It Isn’t There” (Seh nicht, also ist nicht) 5/6, 2022

Fig. 96: “I Don’t See It, so It Isn’t There” (Seh nicht, also ist nicht) 7/8, 2022

Fig. 97: “I Don’t See It, so It Isn’t There” (Seh nicht, also ist nicht) 11/12, 2022

Fig. 98: “I Don’t See It, so It Isn’t There” (Seh nicht, also ist nicht) 13/14, 2022

Fig. 99: “I Don’t See It, so It Isn’t There” (Seh nicht, also ist nicht) 15/16, 2022

Janina Musiałczyk, 2023

Krzysztof Nast

Apart from designing silk scarves and weaving tapestries, Musiałczyk also earned money by illustrating books and designing book covers. From 1967–1980, she worked for the Almqvist Wiksell Förlag publishers in Stockholm and the Wydawnictwo Łódzkie publishers in Łódź. Her work included individual abstract or representational covers and vignettes,[45] as well as the design for an entire children’s book, such as the poems and fables of Jan Huszcza, with colourful, expressively abstracted figures, landscapes and still lifes.[46] For a volume of poetry by Andrzej Biskupski,[47] she designed a black-and-white cover with imaginative forms that shifted between flowers and insects, or geometrically abstracted maritime scenes and landscapes for a book for adolescents by Adam Gruda, which was set bet between Warsaw and the Masuria region.[48]

She also exhibited her own independent artwork at an early stage. In 1969, in Bałuty, the northern administrative district of the five that made up Łódź at the time, she co-founded the artists’ group and cooperative gallery Grupa Plastyków Bałuckich, to which she belonged until 1973 and with which she showed oil paintings, large-scale works and installations in public spaces. In 1971, she was awarded an honour by the Polish Artists’ Association, or ZPAP.

The strongest link to her later work is the image series “The Earth”, which she produced from 1974–1980. The drawings, created with pencil, coloured pencils and black ink on paper, show women’s bodies that are closely connected to the soil and the landscape, which are attacked by birds with long beaks and fiercely spread wings (Fig. 25–26). Clearly, the female figures from symbolistic art, which have a close relationship to Mother Earth and nature, acted as an inspiration.[49] These figures are tortured by nightmares and catastrophes, as with Jacek Malczewski,[50] or are exposed without protection to animals, as with Paul Gauguin,[51] or have hands grabbing for them, as with Munch.[52] At the same time, Musiałczyk’s birds’ wings, which graphically spread out over the entire area of the picture, have the power of the Tachist style prevalent at the time, which was controlled by the subconscious. “My images contain a great deal about my feelings and thoughts”, the artist is quoted as saying a decade later. According to one review of an exhibition, it would appear that these moods and thoughts were predominantly of a resigned, depressive nature: “the woman, the earth, the tree, the wind, the grief, the pain, the loneliness, the sense of weakness”.[53]

In 1973, she received the special prize from the supervisory authority of the school district of Łódź “for extraordinary and innovative services in the field of education and social work”; in 1978, she received the prize awarded by the Polish Ministry of Education and Upbringing (Ministerstwo Oświaty i Wychowania) “for outstanding services in the field of didactic and educational work”. In 1979, two years before she left the country, she was presented with an honorary diploma by the Ministry for her “artistic quality and outstanding services in the field of art education for children and adolescents”.[54]

[45] Helena Duninówna: Ludzie i rzeczy (People and Things), Łódź 1968; Tadeusz Chróścielewski: Szkarłatna godzina (The Scarlet Hour), Łódź 1968.

[46] Jan Huszcza: Wierszyki i bajeczki (Short Poems and Fairytales), Łódź 1969.

[47] Andrzej Biskupski: Mój głos zewnętrzny(My Outer Voice), Łódź 1970.

[48] Adam Gruda: North znaczy północ (North Means North), Łódź 1972.

[49] Max Klinger: “The Beginning of Spring” (Frühlingsanfang). Opus I: Etched sketches, 1879, etching, aquatint, 41.5 x 16.8 cm.

[50] Jacek Malczewski: “In the Dust Cloud” (W tumanie), 1893/94, oil on canvas, 78 x 150 cm, National Museum in Poznan Muzeum Narodowe w Poznanie.

[51] Paul Gauguin: The Loss of Virginity, 1890–91, oil on canvas, 90 x 130 cm, Chrysler Museum, Norfolk.

[52] Edvard Munch: The Hands, 1893, oil on canvas, 91 x 77 cm, Munch-museet, Oslo.

[53] “Hamburger Abendblatt”, 13 March 1986, p. 11 (on the occasion of the exhibition Janina Musiałczyk. Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, Hamburger Sparkasse, 1986).

[54] Polak w świecie. Leksykon Polonii i Polaków za granicą (The Pole in the world. Encyclopaedia of the Polonia and Poles abroad), published by Polska Agencja Informacyjna, Warsaw 2001, page 205 f., 403.

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