Antoni Jezierski was born in 1859 in Ikhrovytsa in the former Tarnopol district (now Ukraine). After finishing lower secondary school in Lviv, in 1878–1882 he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków. During the study at the School of Fine Arts, Jezierski’s works won 4 awards. The young painter also received a scholarship, thanks to which he was able to travel to Italy, where he visited Venice, Bologna, Florence and Rome. During his stay in Italy, Jezierski copied frescos and paintings. After returning to Kraków during the period 1884–1887, he continued his studies at the School of Fine Arts at the composition school of Jan Matejko. In 1890, thanks to another scholarship, he continued his education at the Munich academy. After returning to Poland, he created works in various cities in Russia. He died in 1939 in Lviv.

The photograph shows the main gate of the Henryk Jordan park in Kraków. In the foreground, the road has been flattened (currently, 3 May Avenue), behind which there is a wooden bridge on the River Rudawa. Next, we see a tall wooden gate, with the inscription: Miejski/ Park Dra Jordana. In the background, on the left, a wooden pavilion designated the main pavilion...

The painting shows a small boy embracing a woman who is presented from her shoulders down, without her head. The woman is dead, although it seems that she is returning the caress with a numb gesture of her hand. The artist painted her in a bluish azure and dressed her in a blue dress. He painted all war victims and dead people in this way — using the symbolism of blue: the sphere of shade, immateriality, and transcendence. The form generalised and knowingly made primitive as well as nearly evenly laid colour are for the condensation of essence and expression.

Bike is an exhibit from Tadeusz Kantor’s performance Umarła klasa [The Dead Class].The premiere took place in the Krzysztofory Gallery in Kraków in November 1975. In the play was a prop of an “old man with a bicycle” going round and round, saying goodbye and leaving in step to the François waltz. The old man was played by Andrzej Wełmiński.

Wanda Ślędzińska (1906–1999), a sculptor and a pedagogue associated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków for many decades. She started working at the academy as an assistant at Xawery Dunikowski’s studio. Ślędzińska was the first woman to become the head of the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. She held this post until she retired in 1970.

Tadeusz Seweryn (1894–1975) — Director of the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków — describes this bike in the scientific catalogue sheet as follows: ”A bike made of wood by a cattleman, Franciszek Gucwa. The full wheels (spokeless) are connected with wooden ploughs. The front one has handlebars, heavily fitted with iron at the place where it is connected to the axis of the bike.

This wooden steam train was made by Tadeusz Matusiak in the German prison camp, Luckenwalde (Stalag III-A), in 1944. Tadeusz Matusiak, who was born in Kęty in 1907, was a house painter by profession; from an early age, he painted pictures and carved in wood with great passion. He was a very talented artist.

Above all, Olga Boznańska is a portraitist, an artist of portraits painted in muted colours, sometimes almost monochrome. The figures in her paintings are usually represented indoors, against a neutral background constructed with diffused and subdued lighting, subtly defining the space and imparting her paintings with an aura of the unreal.

As Tadeusz Kantor wrote, the childhood room is never a bright and sun-drenched space — such images are rather literary fiction. How can you capture and recreate what it was really like? Extracting the individual elements: the door, the window ... The window of the children’s room faced outwards, on the street with a pink storey tenement. ...