Pursuing the Whole: The Katarzyna Kobro Award

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Nov 15, 2024 – Aug 3, 2025

Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi

Jerzy Lewczyński, Nasze powiększenie – Nysa 1945

Katarzyna Kobro (1898–1951) is a key figure in the art of Łódź, Poland, and the world. The artist revolutionized ways of thinking about sculpture, ushering in a spacetime dimension, which also set a course for a social approach to building space. She was part of an avant-garde movement that redefined relationships between art and life. The award in her name was initiated by Professor Józef Robakowski, with the blessings of the artist’s daughter, Nika Strzemińska; he raised consciousness of Kobro’s remarkable legacy, while signaling the close bond between the sculptor’s avant-garde achievements and today’s practice. The Katarzyna Kobro Award honors people who, like its namesake, are in constant search of answers to evolving questions and are forever negotiating art’s role in society. Every year, a jury of artists awards outstanding achievement in the visual arts in their broadest definition, particularly appreciating experimental and exploratory attitudes. The idea of this social, grass-roots award draws from the tradition of artists’ solidarity, which is at the very heart of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź.

Jadwiga Sawicka, Było nie było, 2010–2014

“Pursuing the Whole” is a look at history of the Katarzyna Kobro Award to date, with its enduring motto of “From the artists to the artists.” And yet far from remaining in the past, it looks to the future: the exhibition features an empty space set aside for the work of the next prize-winner. In 2001–9, the award was presented in the East Gallery, funded by brothers Krzysztof and Dariusz Bieńkowski. In 2011, its headquarters moved to the Muzeum Sztuki. Every year, the choice by the jury of artists is widely discussed in the arts scene. The exhibition features works by all the award-winners to date, and is mainly based on works from the museum’s collections.

Koji Kamoji, Miasto i dwa słońca, 1964-1965 relief

“Pursuing the Whole” is the title of a book of poems by Julian Przyboś, a member of the a.r. group, whose work led to the creation of the Muzeum Sztuki. “Pursuing the Whole” is also the motto for the present exhibition: it is an attempt to look at two decades of the history of the Katarzyna Kobro Award, to cover the people and artistic practices associated with it. It also attempts to look at the history of art through the lens of this award, taking it as a key to the most interesting phenomena, the changing movements and circumstances in art from the 1960s to the present. The pursuit of generalizations, creating categories and big quantifiers must always end in failure—and so, instead of trying to sketch an “objective” image of the development of the visual arts in Poland, we have crafted a wilfully fragmentary tale, offering flashes of inspiration rather than a linear story. The exhibition, where the individual works are as crucial as their mutual relations, lets us seek ties between different practices and find echoes of ideas and questions that have remained relevant. “Pursuing the Whole” is a mosaic tale and collective portrait proving that the whole, though sometimes hard to describe, is undoubtedly more than just the sum of its parts.

Krzysztof M. Bednarski, Moby Dick, 1986–87

Teresa Murak Zasiew, 1975–1976

Natalia LL, Trwoga paniczna I, 1988

“Pursuing the Whole” is part of a Łódź series of events called Different Differing Differences, which includes exhibitions and events tied to the Katarzyna Kobro Award. The initiators of the series are Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź and the Łódź artistic community.

Past winners of the Katarzyna Kobro Award (in chronological order):

Zbigniew Dłubak, Gerhard Jürgen Blum-Kwiatkowski, Andrzej Dłużniewski, Krzysztof M. Bednarski, Teresa Murak, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Jerzy Lewczyński, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Andrzej Lachowicz, Zygmunt Rytka, Natalia LL, Cezary Bodzianowski, Robert Rumas, Jadwiga Sawicka, Karolina Wiktor, Piotr Bosacki, Cecylia Malik, Ewa Ciepielewska, Koji Kamoji, Elżbieta Jabłońska.

The exhibition “Pursuing the Whole: The Katarzyna Kobro Award” is under the honorary patronage of Hanna Wróblewska, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and Joanna Skrzydlewska, the Marshal of the Łódź Voivodeship.