The scars of war never really heal, we just sometimes forget they’re there. But this show of work by the little-known post-WWII Polish painter Andrzej Wróblewski is more of an open wound than a scar.
Post-war Poland was a damaged place, torn apart by invasion, brutality and fear. Wróblewski’s art is a reflection of those horrifying times. At its best, his work is genuinely powerful. The problem is that this relatively tiny show is trying to condense a whole artistic career down into a couple of rooms.
His experiments in portraiture and abstraction lack any real context here and fail to fire up any passion in the viewer. It’s all a bit confused, and with such a small selection it’s hard to get a sense of timescales or what he was aiming at.
But when his intentions become clear, it’s very, very good. He paints a dead, blue baby crawling into its mother’s arms, a driver navigating blindly down empty paths, groups of people pointing up at the sky in fear – there’s something coming, something very, very frightening.
Realistically, Wróblewski’s victory is one of context – it’s the war and his ability to reflect its aftermath that makes him good, not his actual skill with a paintbrush. This is fear-drenched, pain-soaked, ultra-paranoid art, and it might just tear open a few wounds.
@eddyfrankel