Last Friday, April 8, the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw hosted the official opening of the exhibition “Not censored. Polish Independent Art of the 1980s “, which is an attempt to” show the phenomenon of the independent culture movement of the 1980s in the context of a creative dialogue between artists and society after the introduction of martial law in Poland on December 13, 1981″.

The exhibition shows a wide panorama of artistic phenomena in which the artists manifested their independence in various forms against the communist authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland that tried to kill the society’s aspirations for freedom using the repression service, the militia and the army.

The curator of the exhibition, Tadeusz Boruta said during the conference opening the exhibition, that the aim of the event is to present artistic phenomena and artists who created out of the censorship in the 1980s, who gave up official participation in culture, boycotted the official institutions of cultural life and performed in the second circulation. “There were many such artists, about 1700 people, who created the independent culture movement”, added Tadeusz Boruta.

The viewer who passes through the exhibition halls is guided by the works that contribute to the thematic spaces, with their names derived from the titles of the more important independent exhibitions of the 1980s or artistic works important for that time.

At the exhibition viewers can see works by such artists as: Maria Anto, Tadeusz Brzozowski, Erazm Ciołek, Zbigniew Maciej Dowgiałło, Jerzy Kalina, Piotr Młodożeniec, Janusz Petrykowski, Marek Sapetto, Bożena Sienicka or Jacek Waltoś.

Adrian Andrzejewski