Andrzej Wróblewski “Chauffeur” (1957).
Image courtesy National Museum in Warsaw

War-time trauma and direct realism are the keys to a new retrospective of Polish painter Andrzej Wróblewski at the National Museum in Lublin.

Andrzej Wróblewski is regarded as one of the most outstanding 20th century Polish painters. He died at the age of 29 in 1957 in a mountaineering incident in the Tatras, but his legacy has prompted numerous artists to continue exploring Wróblewski’s themes.

The exhibition presents a cross-section of Wróblewski’s work: from early abstract paintings, through the “Chauffeurs” and “Executions” cycles, to his late works, often done on paper, which are “delicate studies of everyday life, inscribed in the settling and existential mood of the thaw period”.

Host John Beauchamp speaks to curator Marcin Lachowski from the National Museum in Lublin.

More on the exhibition can be found here.