Ties and Threads: Herstories of Eleonora Plutyńska

Ties and Threads: Herstories of Eleonora Plutyńska

Opening: 26.07.2024, 7 p.m.
Exhibition: 27.07–27.08.2024
Foksal 11/4, Warsaw

Curator: Marika Kuźmicz
Cooperation: Grażyna Jackowska, Sunniva Szczepanowska-Lay, Adam Parol
Display, visual identification: Łukasz Izert

The exhibition "Ties and Threads: Herstories of Eleonora Plutyńska" is the latest initiative by the Arton Foundation aimed at promoting knowledge of the work of this artist, devoted instigator and organizer of artistic life, and charismatic lecturer. In the show we present textiles by Eleonora Plutyńska and archival materials relating to her life, from her family and concerning her teaching career at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. We also present textiles by other women artists influenced by Plutyńska – an influence that remarkably continues to this day. Plutyńska’s herstory is one of the most important examples of inspiring successive generations and building enduring values within a culture.

Eleonora Plutyńska (1886–1969) was the daughter of Helena z Wolskich Szczepanowska and Stanisław Szczepanowski, an engineer, economist, writer and social activist, owner of oilfields, cofounder of the Society of Popular Schools, and author of numerous books.

Growing up among the intelligentsia, in an artistic and also wealthy home, Eleonora could take formative journeys around Europe, where, as Wanda Telakowska wrote, she sought “authenticity in art”. As a result of her travels, she developed a deep understanding of the processes shaping culture and the need to discover the sources of the given culture. She gave particular weight to the history of weaving. Her travels included Belgium, England, France, Italy and the Netherlands, among other countries. In 1910, after her marriage to Antoni Plutyński, she enrolled in Olga Boznańska’s studio at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. This stage of her education was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.

In 1923, she took up studies at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts under Prof. Karol Tichy in the Textiles Studio, and also under painter Józef Czajkowski and sculptor Wojciech Jastrzębowski. Four years later she became a dyeing assistant in the Textiles Studio, and after completing her studies, she worked to revive folk weaving in Sokółka and Janów Podlaski. From 1935, she led courses in vegetable dyeing at the Museum of Crafts and Applied Arts in Warsaw and the School of Industry in Lwów (present-day Lviv). She spent World War II in Zalesie Górne, where she ran a weaving workshop. Her instructional method at that time can be regarded as revolutionary – it consisted of creating textiles directly on the loom, without earlier technical sketches. Plutyńska compared the weaving process to painting a picture, and encouraged her students to see it in the same way.

In 1945, she returned to working with weavers from the Białystok area. In 1946, she became an assistant professor and lecturer in the Department of Artistic Textiles at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, and held this position until 1961. In 1948 she was involved in establishing a weaving centre in Janów, near Sokółka. Two years later, thanks to her courses, weavers from the Białystok area began to create a new type of Sokółka carpet based on double-warping. In 1956 she was named an associate professor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.

Eleonora had five siblings: brothers Witold and Stanisław, and sisters Flora, Wanda and Zofia. She was particularly close to Wanda Szczepanowska (1889–1978), who was educated as a chemist and as an artist, studying first at the universities in Lwów and Lausanne and then, after 1923, studied painting at Ludwika and Wilhelm Mehoffer’s Open School of Painting and Drawing in Kraków, and from 1925 at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. Wanda was a cofounder of the Ład Artists’ Cooperative. She relied on her training as a chemist for dyeing fibres, cooperating with her sister Eleonora in this area.

At the exhibition, we present textiles by Eleonora Plutyńska and Wanda Szczepanowska, and by a now-anonymous student of Eleonora’s. We also show a work by Eliza Proszczuk, an artist and lecturer at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts who drew inspiration from Plutyńska’s practice and from the traditional art of Podlasie to execute a series of textiles in the traditional double-warping technique. The leitmotif of Proszczuk’s work is amorphous plant patterns, tying into symbols of femininity. In form and content these works are contemporary, although the weaving technique remained faithful to tradition. Proszczuk’s project arose in cooperation with folk artists from the Chamber of Double-Warped Weaving in Janów, Karolina Radulska and Teresa Pryzmont.

The exhibition also features a rare example of a painting by Eleonora Plutyńska as well as a portrait of Eleonora by her sister Wanda.

Subsidized by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Fund for Promotion of Culture
Co-financed by the City of Warsaw