COURAGE

gyűjtemények hálózata

In 1970, when in New York graffiti just was being born, 18 years old Włodzmierz Fruczek made his first works on the walls of Warsaw. Fruczek was a beginning artist working as a decorator in the Fish Central Office. He regularly crossed the district of Warsaw after the war known as the Wild West, located partially on the ghetto area: ruined, filled with debris, rumored to be a dangerous site of criminality and black economy. The landscape of ruins and dead walls must have a strong impact on the young artist who without any project or idea in a few days painted a set of figures on the walls of the buildings of Żelazna, Grzybowska, and Waliców street. The paintings, made with emulsion paint, depicted outlines of human bodies, sometimes only torsos or limbs. Some of the figures stayed calmly, even holding hands but many of them were outstretched in extreme postures. The painting on the photo, made on the wall on Waliców 14, showed the scene of execution and as the only one of the set had a title: Dance of Death. It was a spontaneous, emotional reaction of the artist on the remains of war and Shoah that he was surrounded by.
Tomasz Sikorski took his picture about 1974. In his narrative, the Fruczek’s work is a symbolic beginning of the graffiti in Poland, independent from the American patterns of street art, artistically significant, and closely tied to the local history. For that reason, the photography of the Dance of Death opens the story about the post-war artistic graffiti in Poland.

Source:
Tomasz Sikorski, Marcin Rutkiewicz, Graffiti w Polsce 1940-2010, Carta Blanca, Warszawa 2011.

Tymoteusz Onyszkiewicz claimed that the most important artefacts from the Fuck 89 Collection are photographs of youth demonstrations from 1988 and 1989. He argued that mass demonstrations that occurred one after another in two-three weeks period were essential for the anarchist movement in the late 1980s. Anarchists, socialists, punks, Rastafarians, pacifists, ecologists, and other alternative youth groups used to regularly gather together in the streets of Warsaw to manifest their disagreement with the state policy and socio-economic situation in Poland. What they showed was also the solidarity among different groups of young people, when the whole movement fought for rights of small parts of itself. Exemplification of this united fight of the youth opposition is given by unique photography which captured one of the demonstrations demanding the legalization of Independent Students’ Union (ISU) in 1988. The photo shows a mob of people with flags and banners of ISU as well as anarchistic, marching through Krakowskie Przedmieście street nearby university’s gate, in spite of ideological differences between liberal-democratic ISU and radical anarchists and socialists. The author of the picture is unknown, but the message about the solidarity of rebellious youth movement is very clear.

In 1968, Zaborskaitė finished and published her book about the life and work of the Lithuanian poet Maironis. She presented it for her doctorate. During her speech, she acknowledged that the idea to write a book had come to her in the 1950s, and the book was written in 1958-1961 (see Stonytė V., Ir aš ją pažinojau...Atsiminimai apie Vandą Zaborskaitę [I Used to Know Her. Memories of Vanda Zaborskaitė], 2016, Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, p. 503). Nevertheless, due to the political situation and the regime's attitudes towards the Department of Lithuanian Language and Literature at Vilnius University, Zaborskaitė not only could not publish her book on Maironis, but was also dismissed from her position as lecturer (in 1961).

The poem “Poslední růže” (“The Last Rose”) from the collection Dům Strach (House of Fear) was written by Jan Zahradníček during his time in Pankrác Prison in the early 1950s. The manuscript of this poem was hidden by Václav Sisel , a guard and technical chief in the Pankrác Prison print shop. This manuscript finally became part of the Jan Zahradníček Collection at the Museum of Czech Literature in 1968. The poem depicts a real event: Václav Sisel, in accordance with Jan Zahradníčekʼs request, gave a rose from the prison garden to Antonín Ludvík Stříž, the canon of the Royal Collegiate Chapter of St. Peter and Paul at Vyšehrad. The rose, which grew and bloomed before prisonersʼ eyes, was then put on the main altar of the Vyšehrad cathedral.

“The Book of Mařenice” (Mařenická kniha) was published as a samizdat in 1977. It includes texts by Pavel Zajíček, Czech poet, musician, artist and leading figure of the Czech underground. These texts (diary notes, personal comments, reflexions, poetry, lyrics) were written in the first half of the 1970s, during Zajíček’s stay in the village of Mařenice in Northern Bohemia. Only one copy of “The Book of Mařenice” was published. This unique exemplar with its original visual concept is currently part of the Libri Prohibiti collection.

In the view of historian Myroslava Mudrak, “Tabirne” (Billiards) is “an exercise in ironic expression.” “Through pastel tones (usually employed by the symbolists who would describe ethereal themes, suspended dream-like situations, somewhat out of touch with the concrete vividness of reality, where saturated primaries and secondary hues would be used), which tend to create a mood of warmth and intimacy, we have the epitome of the grotesque and decadent (another feature of symbolist art).  Typical of this approach is the existential moment—the questioning of “who am I?” “where am I going?” “what’s next for me?” “how did I get here?"  Not only are the incarcerated (in the background) facing the agony of this questioning, but even the Cheka members are put in a situation, which is somewhat out of character with their role.  In a brief, relaxational moment, they seem to let down their guard to feel the weight of their charge lifted momentarily, yet at the same time, still carrying on, making the viewer aware of the horrible and deadly nature of that charge, visible at the end of their sticks.“

Opanas Zalyvakha's "Zone" ("Zona") is a featured item of the permanent exhibition at the Sixtiers Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine. This painting depicts a crystalline labyrinthine construction, with figures passing in front and outside the enclosure, while others are only able to peer over the tops of volumetric poles, resembling wooden fences that surrounded hard labor camps in Siberia and also the pipes of an organ. Some of these figures blend more readily into the background, while others stand out. The narrow slats between the poles obscure the central figure, who seems to be peering out with eyes downcast and despondent demeanor and is, most probably, a prisoner in the zone. A flurry of figures moves around him in complete anonymity, without the least bit of contact. Art historian Myroslava Mudrak notes that the colors are on the bluish-gray side to underscore the effects of being closed in, and the orange of a setting sun also gives the sense of finality and denouement. The sharp verticality and harsh, repetitive linearity of its component forms gives the painting a sense of tactility—a kind of physicality to the experience of being cut off from everything.

Fellow dissident Mykhailo Horyn' considers the verticality of Zalyvakha's paintings to be an indicator of the latter's general philosophy. "There is almost no horizontality to his work...the vertical rays produce a rhythmic-energetic pulse... giving his canvasses a sense of higher meaning and purpose." Another fellow dissident, the literary critic Yevhen Sverstiuk, compares Zalyvakha's approach to that of the poet and political prisoner Vasyl Stus, who always sought "to dig deeper rather than wider." What Stus expressed semantically, Zalyvakha portrayed visually, "hands and forms outstretched, reaching toward the heavens to a higher power, the only force that could defend the individual against tyranny." 

The text of the epistle of bishops entitled Trinaest stoljeća kršćanstva u Hrvata (Thirteen centuries of Christianity among the Croats) was published during Lent in 1976, and it was signed by 23 bishops in Croatia and Yugoslavia. Although its author was not specified, according to the testimony of Fr. Živko Kustić, it is known that it was written by Capuchin friar Tomislav Šagi-Bunić, a prominent theologian in Zagreb and the founder of the theological society Kršćanska sadašnjost (Christian Modernity) (Hudelist 2015, 370). According to Darko Hudelist, it is "one of the most inspired and highest-quality texts ever written in the Catholic Church in Croatia" (Hudelist 2015, 370), a sort of a programmatic text, which served as a guideline for the Church at the time. Although a part of the text was dedicated to (critically examined) Catholic national history, because the reason for the celebration itself was the thirteen centuries of the Christianisation of the Croats, Šagi Bunić directed it to the present time and the future of Christian life following the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. The letter served as an announcement for the celebration of the Grand Jubilee in Solin on 12 June 1976.

Šagi Bunić encouraged believers to live their Christian faith more deeply. However, this automatically meant exclusion from political life under a socialist order, because practical believers could not be members of the League of the Communists of Croatia and thus have careers at higher-level posts.