Jubilee of a Grand Gallery

This gallery is a rarity. Located in a Mosina synagogue dating back to 1876, it seems conservative and provincial. However, Mosina is situated on the outskirts of Poznań and many of the people who live there work in the city. What is more, the gallery, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, is strongly supported by its patrons: the Poznań School of the Arts and the Association of Polish Artists in Poznań. Local authorities and businesses also promote the gallery, which has grown into a local culture center.

The gallery started operations on May 7, 1993, with an exhibition of paintings and sketches by Bogdan Wegner, a resident of Mosina and professor of the Poznań School of the Arts. To date, the gallery has staged about 100 exhibitions of works by nearly 300 Poznan artists and others from Japan, Germany, and Slovakia. Primarily paintings, sculptures, prints and sketches of professors of the School of the Arts have been exhibited there. But innovative installations that defy conventions have also been presented, including ones by Ewa Twarowska-Sioda, Hanna Ograbisz-Krawiec and Andrzej Banachowicz and performances combining modern prints with spatial arrangements, as was the case with works by Wojciech Müller. And this is not all, as apart from exhibitions, which have also included the Debuts series, meetings with writers and poets have been held. The gallery has also presented the works of local artists in Szczecin and Mosina's sister municipality of Seelze in Germany.
To sum up ten years of operations, you can say that the Town Gallery in Mosina has presented well-arranged quality art. Dorota Strzelecka, who runs the gallery, her husband Jacek Strzelecki and Bogdan Wegner have been the main architects of the gallery's success. They have been supported by other members of the Artistic Council and town authorities, whose representatives attend openings and sponsors who invest in the gallery. But if not for the commitment of the Strzelecki family, the gallery would not be so successful.
The jubilee of the 10th anniversary of the gallery has been the crowning of its operations so far. Wojciech Müller, president of Poznań School of Arts, and Zofia Springer, mayor of the Mosina Municipality, assumed honorary patronage over the jubilee, major events of which included an exhibition entitled "School of the Arts at the Mosina Gallery" and a Paper Fashion show staged by Ireneusz Domagała. Another surprising, although great, initiative was the presentation of works by deceased professors of Poznań School of Arts. The presented works originated mainly from private collections and from the School of the Arts and had not been known to a wider public. The works of the following artists were presented: Piotr Potworwoski, Wacław Taranczewski, Stanisław Teisseyre, Tadeusz Brzozowski, Antoni Zydoń and Lech Ratajczyk. The majority of them have already or will soon go down in history of Polish art. The works, such as paintings by Teisseyre, a famous teacher and animator of artistic life, still greatly affect the audience, as do watercolors by Antoni Zydoń, a European-class artist, and oils by Taduesz Brzozowski, a world-class painter.
Thanks to Dorota Strzelecka, who is always smiling and welcoming, openings at the Mosina Gallery are characterized by a friendly ambience and are unforgettable events where you can talk to eminent artists and enjoy well-thought exhibitions of well-known and unknown artists of top quality.

Andrzej Haegenbarth