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November 13th - December 26th 1992
Center of Contemporary Art the Ujazdowski Castle
curator : Piotr Rypson

This exhibition presents the achievements of Polish avant garde and contemporary art in the field of artistic books. It also tries to demonstrate the role of a book in art both as a subject in the process of intellectual creation of work and as a carrier of humanistic ideas.
A book treated as a sphere of art becomes a unique leit motif showing art. itself and its history in a distinctive way, i.e. through a "library" of works. Masters of Polish avant garde from the futurists to the constructivists have built the new esthetic also through new forms of books. A book has become a handy carrier of artistic ideology and a subject of formal experiments; the interface of a poet's and painter's activity. A book reshaped by an artist has finally become, in fact, an object of art.
This phase of artistic book development is shown in prints of the futurists (Tytus Czyzewski, Brunon Jasienski, Stanisław Mlodozeniec, Anatol Stern, Aleksander Wat), often issued jointly with contemporary artists – Mieczyslaw Szczuka, Henryk Stazewski and others. Here there are also books of Tadeusz Peiper's "Zwrotnica", "constructivistic" books of Szczuka and Strzeminski up till "a.r. library". This part of the exhibition comprises works of outstanding representatives of Polish avant garde as well as books created together with foreign artists like Max Ernst, Hans Arp, Fernand Leger and others.
The post-war section of the exhibition consists mainly of works meant as self-contained works of art. A book has been treated here as a means of expression. Here there are works of Zbigniew Makowski, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Andrzej Dluzniewski, Stanislaw Drozdz, Tomasz Wilmanski, Tomasz Konart and others. These works represent various artistic trends, different esthetics, i.e. lirycal symbolism, conceptual, minimal trend as well as independent publications of the 80. Books are accompanied by works of the invited artists who undertake in their production the theme of books. In those "Pages" a book is treated as a unique point of reference, as an idea, a metaphor outlining the national area of reference for each work. The below mentioned artists have been invited to the take part in the exhibition: Joanna Adamczewska, Janusz Baldyga, Anna Maria Bauer, Krzysztof Bednarski, Jan Berdyszak, Stanislaw Drozdz, Andrzej Dluzniewski, Bozena Grzyb-Jarodzka, Pawel Jarodzki, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, Tomasz Wilmanski, Anastazy Wisniewski and the Academy of Movement.

Piotr Rypson

Center of the Contemporary Art is preparing a large catalogue covering the history and the role of artistic books in Polish avant garde and contemporary arts.
Books and Pages exhibition has been arranged jointly with Center of Contemporary Art in Warsaw and Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (Germany). For the first time, though in a slightly different arrangement, the exhibition was presented in Herzog August Bibliothek ("Der Raum der Worte", September - November'91), then in Schleswig-Holsteinische Landes-bibliothek in Kiel. The exhibition was accompanied with a large illustrated catalogue in German.