Art News Poland

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Shortlist announced for controversial Warsaw monument

Plans have attracted criticism over former Warsaw Ghetto site

Published online: 06 February 2015
Thirty years on, the great film that liberated artists to explore the Holocaust

On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Polish artists share how Claude Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half-hour epic has inspired them to create new narratives of the terrible events

Published online: 27 January 2015
Miroslaw Balka: what “Shoah” means to me

The Polish artist on the influence of Claude Lanzmann’s epic Holocaust documentary

Published online: 27 January 2015
Star of David rises over Hitler’s former HQ

Star of David rises over Hitler’s former HQ
Artists rebuild fragments of a former synagogue in Polish castle

By Julia Michalska. News, Issue 260, September 2014
Published online: 16 September 2014

The Nazis turned Poznan’s Great Synagogue into a swimming pool

Two German artists, Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz, have dismantled fragments of a Jewish synagogue in Poznan and installed them in Adolf Hitler’s former office in the Polish city’s castle. The work will form part of “The Eye of Memory” (13 September-12 October) at Poznan’s Castle Culture Centre.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, the invading Nazi forces in Poznan turned the city’s Great Synagogue, built in 1907, into a public swimming pool and spa. Extraordinarily, the former synagogue continued to function as a municipal pool until 2011, and was only closed due to the poor condition of the building.

In 1939, the Nazis also transformed the Imperial Castle in Poznan into Hitler’s official residence. The castle’s chapel housed Hitler’s office, which was rebuilt to resemble his room in the Reich’s chancellery. The building was severely damaged in 1945. It was refurbished and now serves as the Castle Culture Centre.

“It was no coincidence that the Nazis built Hitler’s office in a former chapel. It was about the consecration of their government and its empowerment. At the same time, they deconsecrated a place that was holy to Jewish people. Now, through the fragments of the synagogue, the artists will deconsecrate Hitler’s former office. It’s a very symbolic gesture,” says Anna Hryniewiecka, the director of the culture centre.

Hoheisel and Knitz are best known for their “counter-monuments”, which subvert the traditional understanding of the iconography of monuments. In addition to the installation inside Poznan’s castle, the artists’ Monument of Grey Buses, first shown in 2006, will be placed outside. The work, which has previously been installed in cities including Ravensburg and Berlin, is a memorial to the many disabled adults and children who were transported in buses to concentration camps, where they were murdered.

Artists rebuild fragments of a former synagogue in Polish castle

Published online: 16 September 2014
Painting lost after Second World War returned to Poland

The 19th-century landscape by Oswald Achenbach, missing since 1946, turned up in a Cologne auction catalogue

Published online: 13 August 2014
Ai Weiwei digs deep in Warsaw

The Chinese artist's work in Poland will be invisible to the public

Published online: 17 June 2014
Warsaw galleries aim to build a market from the ground up

Now in its third year, the city’s annual weekend of gallery openings and art events tried to make up for a lack of local collectors

Published online: 02 October 2013
Auschwitz unveils Israeli work

Artist Michal Rovner has created a display of works made by children during the Holocaust

Published online: 13 June 2013
Jewish history museum opens in Warsaw on anniversary of ghetto uprising

Eight galleries, including the reconstructed roof of a 17th-century wooden synagogue, will tell the story of 1,000 years of Jewish presence in Poland

Published online: 19 April 2013
Polish show digs into Andy Warhol’s Slovakian roots

Exhibition in Krakow puts Pop artist’s work in context with his central European background

Published online: 17 January 2013

Polish deputy culture minister among dead in plane crash

Published online: 14 April 2010
Thirty years on, the great film that liberated artists to explore the Holocaust

On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Polish artists share how Claude Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half-hour epic has inspired them to create new narratives of the terrible events

Issue 265, available from the Archive
Solved: the square root of avant-garde art

The Whitechapel Gallery traces the story of geometric abstraction around the globe from pre-revolutionary Russia to the present

Issue 264, available from the Archive
Italian group saves Auschwitz memorial from being destroyed

Spiral walkway from concentration camp will go on display in Florence

Issue 264, available from the Archive
Fixing the sculptures the war broke

Many works in Berlin’s sculpture collections were damaged in 1945. But should they be left as a reminder of a dark past or restored to reflect the artists’ intentions?

Issue 262, available from the Archive
Rules of engagement

Political agenda to the fore in the work of the artists shortlisted for the £40,000 Artes Mundi prize

Issue 261, available from the Archive
The adventures of Bernardo Bellotto

View painting for the 18th-century courts of Europe

Issue 261, available from the Archive
Gilt-edged diplomacy

How Lord Raby’s silver wine cooler was used to impress European kings

Issue 261, available from the Archive
The rest of the month’s stories at a glance: September

Issue 261, available from the Archive
UK-Russia Bacon show goes on…

…but British government officially pulls out of joint Year of Culture

Issue 260, available from the Archive