The Toruń Center for Contemporary Art (CSW) Znaki Czasu, is hosting the works of one of the most important abstractionists in the world – Sean Scully. The exhibited paintings include a “Wall Landline Irena” work, donated to the gallery in Toruń and dedicated to the memory of a Polish woman, Irena Gut, who saved 12 Jews from death.

Sean Scully shows his paintings and sculptures for the first time in Poland. It is an exhibition, presented on an area of 2 thousand sq m – including the 7-meter-high Column Hall of the CSW. The exhibition is a regular retrospective, where guests can trace various motives of Scully’s work and the changes in his style. Its most important part is the series of monumental paintings from the “Doric Series”. First shown as a complete series, these 12 paintings are his tribute to the tradition of the ancient Doric style.

The exhibition presents a painting, “Wall Landline Irena”, dedicated to a Polish woman, Irena Gut, who, during the liquidation of the ghetto in Tarnopol in 1942, helped 12 Jews escape, saving them from deportation and death. Half of them were provided with a hiding place in the forest where Irena delivered food, and the other half hid in the house of a German officer where she worked as domestic help. In 1949, with the help of the UN delegate William Opdyke, she left for the United States, where she married him after some time. The drama and heroism of her life made a great impression on Sean Scully, who decided to devote his painting to her and donate it to the Center for Contemporary Art.

Sean Scully is currently one of the most important abstractionists, highly assessed in all rankings of contemporary artists. In the list “Who is the greatest painter in the world today?” published by the Contemporary Art Issue in 2021, Scully ranks 11th between Anselm Kiefer and Jasper Jones.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński