The exhibition was a joint presentation of the works of Jadwiga and Ryszard Otręba – two outstanding Polish printmakers of the second half of the twentieth century, and privately a married couple who have been together for over 60 years. The story of their paths to artistic individuality intermingled here with the story of cooperation, mutual interaction and, above all, affection. The presentation of selected works from the artists’ extensive oeuvres also brought the general public closer to their extraordinary Kraków home, which houses their studio but also serves as a place for international social gatherings.

Jadwiga Kaim-Otręba (b. 1935) is an artist who places humanity at the centre of her art. Professionally, she was associated with the Technikum Odzieżowym in Kraków (Fashion Vocational School), where she taught drawing for twelve years (1968–1980). Her prints won acclaim for, among other things, her extremely skilful handling of colour and her varied, delicate, highly painterly transitions, which lend her compositions their characteristic expressiveness.

She took part in around one hundred group exhibitions of prints, drawings, and posters in Poland and abroad, in Austria, Belgium, West Berlin, Czechoslovakia, France, Cuba, West Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, the United States, and Italy. She also showed at the International Print Biennial in Kraków, the International XYLON Exhibition, Artists Against War and Violence – Artists in Defence of Peace in Berlin, Warsaw, Paris, Schwetzingen, Bydgoszcz, and Toruń, at the XYLON International Graphic Triennial in Winterthur, and at the Kanagawa International Graphic Arts Exhibition.

Jadwiga Kaim-Otręba’s works are held in the collections of the National Museum in Kraków, the Museum of the Archdiocese of Warsaw, the Museum in Tarnów, in the municipal collections in Zakopane, in the collections of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Warsaw, in the collection of graphics at OK ZPAP in Kraków, the National Museum in Stockholm, the Pratt Graphics Center in New York, the University of Zielona Góra Library, and in private collections.

Ryszard Otręba (b. 1932) is an artist, without whom it is impossible to imagine the success of Polish graphic arts in the latter half of the twentieth century. An outstanding specialist in the field of visual communication, he is known mainly for his abstract, geometric compositions. His professional and artistic life was centred on the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he taught for many years as a professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design. He created an internationally unique programme for the Department of Visual Communication.

His works are characterised by a distinctive abstract language, conscious simplicity, austerity, and classical elements of printmaking. He mastered the extremely rare and difficult technique of gypsum engraving, which he innovatively perfected (in foreign textbooks for graphic designers this technique is called the ‘Otręba method’). He is the author of numerous publications on visual communication, the design of signs and packaging, and issues of visual processes and their relationship to visual semiology.

His works are found in museum collections in Poland and abroad in the National Museums in Kraków, Warsaw, Poznań, Szczecin, and Gdańsk, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódż, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the Tate Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, and many others.

Ryszard Otręba and Jadwiga Kaim

Curator

dr Monika Rydiger

Curator of the International Cultural Centre

Curator

dr Monika Rydiger

Curator of the International Cultural Centre

Art historian and critic, curator. Creator and co-creator of exhibitions such as: Hunting Down Modernism: The Prohibited Arts in the Third Reich (2011), Memory: Registers and Territories (2013), Makom. Dani Karavan: The Essence of Place (2015), The Logic of the Local: Norwegian and Polish Contemporary Design (2016). Member of the Polish Section of AICA (International Association of Art Critics), vice-president of the Kraków branch of the Association of Art Historians in Poland. Author of many essays and articles on modern and contemporary art, particularly sculpture and architecture.

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