Owner City of Bydgoszcz Phone +48 52 339 30 50 | Type Modern Art Gallery | |
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Location Gdanska street 20, Bydgoszcz, Poland Address Gdańska 20, 85-001 Bydgoszcz, Poland Similar Muzeum Okręgowe im Leona, Muzeum Fotografii, Brda, Muzeum Wodociągów w Bydgos, Muzeum Kanału Bydgoskiego | ||
BWA Bydgoszcz - Municipal Art Gallery of the city of Bydgoszcz- is the largest and most important art gallery in Bydgoszcz .
Contents
Location
The gallery is located on Gdanska street 20, behind the Pomeranian Arts House which gives on to the street. It stands between St Peter's and St Paul's Church and Park Casimir the Great.
History
After World War II, the majority of artistic activity in Bydgoszcz was concentrated in the Pomeranian Arts House, be it Opera, Theatre or exhibitions.
On 7 May 1946, during the celebration of the 600th anniversary of the city of Bydgoszcz, has been unveiled the Pomorski Dom Sztuki (Pomeranian Arts House) comprising, among other elements, a permanent showroom for arts, called BWA ((Polish) Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych - Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions). The building on Gdanska street was also the seat of Pomeranian Art workshops for writers, musicians and artists from all domains, and in addition the premises have been used by State School of Art "Leon Wyczółkowski" until 1982.
To gain independence and visibility, a dedicated building has been erected in 1970, thanks to the active support of, among others, Alexander Schmidt then President of the Bydgoscy Region, and Andrzej Szwalbe, director of the Pomeranian Philharmonic. It had been designed so as to be connected to the "historical" building, the Pomeranian Arts House. In 1994, the gallery came under the administration of the Town Hall.
Features
The facility provides currently there the opportunity for each discipline of contemporary art environment to be exhibitedin fields such as: painting, graphics, sculpture, fabric creations, photography, video art...
It houses works of authors from various origins: Bydgoszcz, but also from Poland and abroad.
The two floors edifice offer extensive spaces, each consisting of a large hall with an area of 364 square meters and a chamber hall with an area of 61 square meters. In addition, the ground floor there has got a 118 square meter multimedia room.
The library of the gallery provides new publications in the field of contemporary art, as well as a documentation regarding biographical files of artists. Each exhibition of the gallery is provided with printed catalogs and sundry documentation (briefcase containing catalogs, reviews, photos, videos).
The facility coordinates its activity with 2 other galleries of Bydgoszcz, Kantorek Gallery (Gdanska street 3) and Brda Gallery.
Activities
Among the individual exhibitions that has been housed in the BWA pavilion, works of the following artists were shown: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Kiejstut Bereźnicki, Jerzy Duda-Gracz, Edward Hartwig, Władysław Hasior, Teofil Ociepka, Henryk Stażewski, Józef Szajna, Alina Szapocznikow or Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. Also various works have been displayed by well-known foreign artists: Salvador Dalí, Joachim Fleischer, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol.
BWA is the organizer of an annual event, the "Biennale of Visual Arts in Bydgoszcz", with the support of the Department of Culture of the City of Bydgoszcz.
Education classes called "Days of the School of Art", are held on Fridays, with small exhibitions and discussions art. The gallery also coordinates education plastic classes as extra-curriculum courses in more than 30 schools in Bydgoszcz: those classes are taught by professional artists of Bydgoszcz.
The gallery organizes numerous lectures on art, film screenings, meetings with directors, seminars, panel discussions. An important event is the annual Nights of Performance, where visitors can see live performances of Polish and foreign artists.
It has also hosted famous exhibitions (CHINaRT, Contemporary Art Lithuania) but does not forget local artists in Bydgoszcz, who have individual and collective exhibitions and competitions ("Polygonum"). In order to promote those artists, BWA organizes exhibitions in other Polish art gallery (Poznań, Piła) and abroad, in cities such as Vilnius (Lithuania), Pitești (Romania), Le Havre and Rouen (France) or Copenhagen (Denmark).
Since 2011, Gallery collaborates with the organizers of Camerimage festival, proposing exhibitions in the field of visual arts, with notorious guests:
- "Andrzej Wajda - Drawings " in 2011;
- "David Lynch - Lithographs " in 2012;
- "Ryszard Horowitz - RH 75" in 2014.
On the occasion of 50 years of activity (1949-1999), BWA gallery issued in 2000 a 150-pages album edited by Kazimierz Jułgi, with 113 reproductions depicting works of Polish and foreign artists, whose works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions.