Wrocław and the Coils of Art

In April this year I was in Wrocław for the second time. On a previous visit I had given a reading of some of my English poems at a Spanish bookshop – which ought to have been a Quixotic venture you might think, and indeed it would have been had the shop not been well-stocked with literary titles in several European languages, including English. It was a seriously cosmopolitan venue and there was a good turnout for the reading. The Poles in general value their own literary heritage and these days English is the second language. When I worked in Poland for the British Council in the 1980s, Russian was the default second language taught in the schools. But when the Wall went down, the language of the Soviets went with it.

On this second visit I was slated to give lectures at the universities of Wrocław and Jelenia Góra, where my host Teresa Brus holds professorships (at both institutions). Clearly a pedagogic force of nature in the context of literary culture, she is also a great enthusiast for the visual arts. And so, lectures done, we set off to check out the local repositories of modern Polish art. There are three main collections in Wrocław, all housed in very distinctive buildings. First there was the so-called Four Domes Pavilion, down by the river. An architectural masterpiece dating from 1912–13, this is symmetrical in design, with a series of spacious and well-lit galleries. Generally recognised as one of the most important repositories for early to mid-twentieth-century Polish art, its holdings include a certain amount of ...