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“Minor Remnants from Solna Street…” is an exhibition devoted to the post-war, youthful work of Izaak Celnikier, a great Jewish artist who survived the Holocaust. For the first time, the exhibition will feature works created immediately after the war – cartoon illustrations to stories by Awrom Rejzen and poems by Dawid Sfard. 

Izaak Celnikier was born in Warsaw in 1923, and as a child, he lived in the Janusz Korczak Orphan Home. When the war broke out, he left with his family for Białystok, and from 1941 he lived in the local ghetto. After liquidating the Białystok ghetto, Izaak Celnikier went through the German camps in Stutthof, Auschwitz, Flossenbürg and Dachau. After the war, he studied monumental painting, and in 1957 he went on a scholarship to Paris, where he lived and worked until the end of his life. He died in 2011.

Shortly before leaving for France in 1957, Isaac Celnikier began working with the “Idisz Buch” publishing house. He created illustrations for Yiddish publications: Oysgeveylte verk (Selected Works) by Abraham Reisen, and Lider (Poems) by Dovid Sfard – publications so far untranslated into Polish. The illustrations, which Celnikier never saw in their final publication because they were published after he left Poland, contain coded content relating the viewer to the artist's biography. The drawings thus create a parallel narrative to the text they illustrate. In his work, Celnikier projected his personal experience of the Holocaust onto Rejzen's stories from earlier times, while he interpreted some stories as prefigurations of the Holocaust and gave expression to this in the illustrations he created.

The exhibition will attempt to read Celnikier's biography in illustrations of Yiddish stories and poems. We will trace how these drawings, created before his departure from Poland, can be read as sketches for large-format paintings already created in France, and referring to a single original – images from the ghetto fixed in the artist's memory.

The exhibition will be on display until June 16, 2024.

Director
Monika Krawczyk

Exhibition curator
Zuzanna Benesz-Goldfinger

Exhibition production
Marta Kapełuś, Michał Krasicki, Zuzanna Benesz-Goldfinger, Jakub Bendkowski

Design of the exhibition and graphic design
Kuba Maria Mazurkiewicz

Cooperation
Sara Francuz

Poster design
To/studio

Exhibition installation
Pracownia KONTRA Tomasz Marzec

Design and execution of murals
Paulina Włostowska, Michał Szczęsny Szuwar

Translation of Avrom Reyzen’s short stories and Dovid Sfard’s poems from Yiddish
Magdalena Wójcik, Marek Tuszewicki, Agnieszka Żółkiewska

English translation
Zofia Sochańska

Editing and proofreading
Jolanta Rudzińska

Conservation care
Violetta Bachur, prof. Joanna Czernichowska

Communication and marketing
Franciszek Bojańczyk, Anna Dobrowolska-Balcerzak, Aleksandra Galant, Natasza Majewska

Accompanying program
Anna Ekielska

Individuals and institutions lending objects and rights to publication
Anne Szulmajster-Celnikier, Jacob Celnikier, Sarah Celnikier, Yoshua Celnikier
Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie
Muzeum im. Jacka Malczewskiego w Radomiu
Muzeum Lubuskie im. Jana Dekerta w Gorzowie Wielkopolskim
Muzeum Plakatu w Wilanowie
Oddział Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie
Biblioteka Narodowa
Korczakianum, pracownia naukowa Muzeum Warszawy
Archiwum Akademii Sztuk Pięknych
Biblioteka Publiczna m. st. Warszawy Biblioteka Główna
Województwa Mazowieckiego
Tygodnik „Polityka”
Yad Vashem Art Museum
Ghetto Fighters House
Galeria Moravska w Brnie

Acknowledgements
Marta Kapełuś, Michał Krasicki, Jakub Bendkowski, Piotr Rypson, Magdalena Wójcik, Marek Tuszewicki, Joanna Pikuła, Anna Jaroszuk, Monika Krawczyk, Małgorzata Sołtysik, Dariusz Lipowski, Marzena Mikos, Adam Barbasiewicz, Helena Datner, Anne Szulmajster-Celnikier, Jacob Celnikier, Yoshua Celnikier, Sarah Celnikier, Barbara Majewska, Katarzyna Rodrigo-Pereira, Kuba Maria Mazurkiewicz, Renata Piątkowska, Jerzy Malinowski, Włodzimierz Lewin, Filip Sfard, Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov, Jacek Antoni Zieliński, Marta Ciesielska, Marcin Lachowski, Piotr Słodkowski, Luiza Nader, Dorota Jarecka, Anna  Landau-Czajka, Barnabé Moinard, Clara Daguin, Zofia Mioduszewska-Wajszczak, Maria Braunstein, Jan Grądzki, Miriam Böhm, Violetta Bachur, Franciszek Bojańczyk, Anna Dobrowolska-Balcerzak, Anna Ekielska, Natasza Majewska, Aleksandra Galant, Paweł Fijałkowski, Noam Silberberg, Aleksandra Sajdak, Anna Przybyszewska-Drozd, Alicja Kościan, Zbigniew Sochoń, Agnieszka Jeż, Magdalena Bendowska, Wiktor Sybilski, Agnieszka Reszka, Monika Taras, Krzysztof Czajka-Kalinowski, Grzegorz Kwolek, Agnieszka Żółkiewska, Karolina Szymaniak, Magdalena Siek, Tomasz Kunicki-Goldfinger, Agata Kunicka-Goldfinger, Teresa Śmiechowska, Maria Żórowska, Jakub Małek, Kacper Piszczek, Anna Duńczyk-Szulc, dr Ewa Rogalewska, Jolanta Szczygieł-Rogowska, Joanna Tomalska-Więcek, Marta Surowiec, Danuta Godyń

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