Künstlerstube

Abstract

In the history of the National Museum in Warsaw, Jan Białostocki (1921–88) was the spiritus movens of its modern academic and museological format. To this day, research pursued by this scholar as well as the exhibitions and permanent galleries he prepared serve as the founding myth of the Museum, where he worked as a curator between 1956 and 1988. The published text, written at the turn of 1987/88 and dedicated to Prof. Jacek Woźniakowski, is a poignant account of Nazi concentration camps: Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen and Linz III, where Białostocki managed to save himself by working as a graphic artist in the Künstlerstube – the camp’s art workshop. The text is supplemented with an extensive introduction by Antoni Ziemba, who analyses the attitude and deliberations of his academic master, recalling Białostocki’s role in defending the great humanist tradition, his relationship with Erwin Panofsky’s thought as well as German art and cultural history.