We would like to invite you to the “Archive” exhibition of Bronisław Wolanin – one of the most prominent creators of Polish ceramic design, a graduate of the Higher School of Fine Arts in Wrocław, Poland (currently the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design), for half a century an artistic director and chief designer at the Artistic Handicraft Cooperative “Ceramika Artystyczna” in Bolesławiec, Poland.

On the 10th anniversary of his death, we are opening a private archive of the artist’s work, known primarily as an indisputable creator of a contemporary style in the Bolesławiec stoneware. The exhibition will feature works from his “unique activity”: prints along with the porcelain and stoneware reliefs.

Wolanin’s ceramic paintings (the so-called “Tiles”) are organic forms with abstract shapes. Pulsating and growing like a mycelium, the tiny “scales”, arranged with meditative repetition, create biomorphic worlds and bring to mind architectural forms, landscapes, trees, and more unidentified figures; all this is enclosed in rectangular tiles in subdued colours of brown, black, white and blue. More expressive are his drawings, which many times served as the beginning of his explorations for relief tiles. Both his ceramic paintings and drawings are connected by a deep fascination with nature and its basic materials.

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Bronisław Wolanin was born in 1937 in Bełżec, Poland (Lublin Voivodeship), and died on February 17, 2013, in Bolesławiec, Poland (Lower Silesian Voivodeship). He graduated from the Faculty of Ceramics at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Wrocław, Poland (currently the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design), and received his diploma with honours in 1962 (in the studio of Professor Julia Kotarbińska). After that, he worked as a ceramics teacher at a vocational school in Bolesławiec. In 1964, he took the position of an artistic director and chief designer at the Artistic Handicraft Cooperative “Ceramika Artystyczna” in Bolesławiec, with which he remained associated for the rest of his career. He has received numerous awards and honours for his work, including the Silver and Gold Cross of Merit, and the Gloria Artis Bronze Medal. In 2011, he was awarded the title of honorary citizen of the city of Bolesławiec.