Murals Gdansk Zaspa

Pilotów 16f
2016

After many years of creative acquaintance, it is the first authorial collaboration of Rafał Roskowiński and Jacek Zdybel.

The mural directly refers to the aviation history of the space on which Zaspa was founded and praises the aesthetics of modernism and Polish technical thought of the interwar period.

The plane depicted on the mural is PZL 37 Łoś, a Polish bomber designed by Jerzy Dąbrowski. The plane was a breakthrough design in many respects. It is painted according to an advertising poster prepared for the Paris Air Show in 1938. What’s interesting, it’s depicted in civilian, not military identification.

The image of a pilot woman at the bottom of the wall is inspired by Tamara Lempicka, a Polish modernist painter. Although Lempicka did not fly by herself, she loved speed – hence her famous self-portrait in the green Bugatti. Movement, momentum, machine, futurism were the key slogans of the modernism of the Art Deco era. Patterns on the scarf come straight from the visual setting of the Polish pavilion from the international design exhibition in Paris in 1925.

Jan Paweł II i Lech Wałęsa
Dywizjonu 303 33a
1999

The mural was created in the very same part of the city where a mass was held as part of John Paul II’s third pilgrimage to Poland in 1987. The sketch of the papal altar designed by Marian Kołodziej echoes this event. The Pope, painted in a ‘devotional’ style, recalls the multiformat banners which decorated the uppermost walls of blocks during the papal mass. Wałęsa, however, has been done with the dynamism characteristic of Roskowiński and in sharp, comic lines. The motif of the mural was used by Roskowiński in 2012 on the wall of a block in Chișinău, Moldova.

Toucans
Bajana 3c
1997

One of ten works painted as part of the festivities for Gdańsk’s millennium. The mural sums up the basic idea of the festival – to bring colour to the concrete space of tower blocks. Rafał Roskowiński has used the motif many times and his toucans can still be seen on Karolkowa Street in Warsaw. Fearing intervention by the local graffiti scene, Roskowiński anticipated the fact and left the lower part of the wall to Zaspa’s TKA crew. In line with the unwritten code, the “Gdańsk” graffiti was saved and still complements Roskowiński’s colourful mural.

Miłosz in a tower block estate
Startowa 29e
2011

The mural was created as part of the celebrations for the Year of Miłosz and is based on a photograph by Janusz Kobyliński depicting a meeting between Czesław Miłosz with shipyard workers during his visit to Gdańsk in 1981. Miłosz is passing Lech Wałęsa a pistol and appears to be saying “Make a revolution”.

Fot. Adam Korzeniewski

Janusz Kobyliński, Agencja Forum

Autor

Rafal Roskowiński. Precursor of mural art in Poland. Active in public space since the late 80’s. In the  90’s started painting large murals in Zaspa. Organized the first festival of monumental painting to celebrate the millennium of Gdansk in 1997. Founder and lecturer of the Gdansk School of Mural.

Aleksandra Lech

2015
Belgium, Ghent, Jan Palfijnstraat 17

The mural is a homage to the French artist Jean Cocteau and was painted on a wall of a club which bears his name. The hallucinatory atmosphere of the project is linked to the surrealist films in which the artist often invokes Greek mythology. From the smoke of Cocteau’s cigarette arises an alternative reality inhabited by a satyr.

 Tineke Bacqué, Aleksandra Lech, Ezra Veldhuis, Rafał Roskowiński, Jacek Zdybel

Aleksandra Lech

2015
Mokra Wieś, Władysław Podkowiński Schools, ul. Marii Konopnickiej 12

The work is an allegorical image of Boy in a Pond – Mokra Wieś from the impressionist period of Władysław Podkowiński, painted in the same location. The painter is patron of the school where the mural was created.

 Aleksandra Lech, Katarzyna Jurga, Karolina Pielak, Karol Madyjewicz, Rafał Roskowiński, Michał Ujczak, Jacek Zdybel

Rafał Roskowiński

2014
Warszawa, Pileckiego 111

This comic-style mural shows a unit of anti-communist partisans in the forest fighting a great beast which personifies the Soviet Union. The image comes complete with a likeness of Witold Pilecki, a soldier of the Home Army, who made it into Auschwitz concentration camp where he started a resistance movement. After the war he was sentenced to death by the communist authorities.

 Emil Goś, Rafał Roskowiński, Michał Węgrzyn

Małgorzata Popinigis

2014
Gdańsk, Królikarnia 5

The two murals designed by Małgorzata Popinigis are a reference to their location. One is an archive map of Gdańsk set against tailor’s sewing patterns while the other one, more industrial in tone, recalls the manufacturing past, as LPP company headquarters is housed in a former cigarette factory. The design was transferred onto the walls using the frottage technique. A full-scale print-out was covered in graphite dust, and then pressed against the wall. In this way an outline was left behind which in the next stage was undercoated and painted in.

 Michalina Gniazdowska, Aneta Gruszczyk, Aleksandra Lech, Katarzyna Marcinkowska, Magdalena Pela, Monika Reut, Klaudia Szalecka, Rafał Roskowiński, Filip Sobierajski, Wojciech Woźniak, Jacek Zdybel

Karolina Pielak

2015
Wizna, Cmentarna 3

The mural commemorates the removal of Wizna families between 1940-1941. Amongst those forcibly deported by the Soviet occupier was 3-year-old Marianna Dobrońska. The girl is immortalised on the wall of a house near the cemetery, where the ‘Road to Paradise …’  began and where the family home of little Marianna once stood. The phrase was coined by Aleksander Gawrychowski, one of many residents of Wizna deported to Kazakhstan.

 Agata Kędra, Karolina Pielak, Magdalena Sadłowska, Paulina Tusk, Karol Madyjewicz, Rafał Roskowiński, Jacek Tempczyk, Grzegorz Terlecki, Michał Ujczak

Aleksandra Lech

2014
Wizna, Czarnieckiego 78

The mural was created to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Monte Cassino, which ended on 14 May 1944, and is dedicated to the 30-man group of soldiers from Wizna who took part.

 Magdalena Giesek, Agata Kędra, Aleksandra Lech, Katarzyna Marcinkowska, Magdalena Pela, Monika Reut, Javier Bernal-Arevalo, Rafał Roskowiński, Grzegorz Terlecki, Jacek Zdybel.

Collaborative work

2013
Wizna, Pawła z Wizny 2

The second Wizna mural by the Gdańsk School of the Mural is inspired by the work of Józef Chełmoński.

 Marcelina Groń, Agata Kędra, Natalia Podejko, Anna Rucińska, Adam Chmielowiec, Kamil Giedrojć, Damian Nowakowski, Rafał Roskowiński, Bartosz Sasiński, Grzegorz Terlecki,  Krzysztof Witkowski.

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