Wanda Czełkowska

Wanda Czełkowska was a key figure of the Polish avant-garde, yet her work remains largely unknown outside Poland and has only recently begun to receive international attention.

Born in Brześć nad Bugiem, Poland in 1930, Czełkowska graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1954 and lived and worked in Poland until her death in 2021. She began her artistic career by collaborating with the renowned modernist sculptor Xawery Dunikowski on socialist sculpture commissions, but rebelled against the strictures of socialist aesthetics. Her best-known works, a series of sculptures titled Głowy (Heads), show the influence of neo-primitivism and would reappear throughout her oeuvre, sometimes abstracted, deconstructed, bisected or veiled. When asked if they are male or female, the artist responded: “My Heads are a Third Gender.” In this ever-changing, diversified head form, we can observe a gradual departure from figurative, expressionist depictions towards conceptual art and a search for a new sculpture matter.

From the 1970s, her work had a distinctly conceptual feel, the most monumental examples being the installations Table (1968–1971) and Absolute Elimination of Sculpture as a Notion of Shape (1972). She was honoured with the “Award of the Critique and Artistic Information Section” by the Association of Polish Journalists in Krakow for her spatial project, Absolute Elimination of Sculpture as a Notion of Shape (1973). While she defined herself as a “sculptor,” having always refused the feminine usage of the noun, she also practised installation, drawing, painting and photography. For Czełkowska, art was an intellectual challenge and an expression of intelligence. She perceived the creative process as giving shape to thoughts, and called it “sculpting in her mind.”

Today, Czełkowska’s works are in major institutional collections including the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Center of Polish Sculpture in Oronsko, and the National Museum in Kraków. She was twice awarded the scholarship of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in 2001 and 2012. In 2016, the National Museum in Warsaw curated a large-scale retrospective exhibition of her work: “Wanda Czełkowska: Retrospection,” which was followed by an international symposium. In July 2023, Muzeum Susch presented her first ever retrospective exhibition outside of Poland titled “Wanda Czełkowska: Art is not Rest.”