Stanisław Fijałkowski. Drawings from Kazimierz

Stanisław Fijałkowski, a painter and printmaker from Łódź and a pupil of Władysław Strzemiński, drew in Kazimierz Dolny, notably in 1992; the Vistula Museum now hangs those drawings next to the prints he later developed from them. The show runs from 2 August to 30 November 2026 in the Temporary Exhibitions Gallery of the museum’s main building at Rynek 19, on the town’s market square. The closing date comes from the museum’s printed invitation, since its announcement of the show gives only the opening. The museum publishes no English text on the exhibition; the words below are our translation of its Polish description.

Vistula Museum on the exhibition:

The axis of the exhibition is formed by the drawings from Kazimierz and the prints that were made from those drawings. Around them, shared threads are built, or perhaps woven, which lead us to the question of place: the place that is Kazimierz and the place that is Stanisław Fijałkowski’s painting. The cultural context, or the notion of community, matters. A balance of opposites resounds. There is, then, gravity and lightness, matter and spirit, life and death.

What to expect

Do not come for views of the market square or the river. The drawing on the museum’s invitation is a handful of broad black strokes and lines inside a hand-drawn frame, and the Katarzyna Napiórkowska Gallery in Warsaw, which deals in the artist’s work, describes the Kazimierz drawings as almost abstract. What makes the show worth seeing is the step from a sheet drawn on the spot to a finished print.

The museum gives no number of works. According to the Napiórkowska Gallery’s announcement of 3 September 2026, the drawings were made during a plein-air session for printmakers in 1992, and the 33 drawings are joined by paintings, prints and a film about Fijałkowski by the video artist Józef Robakowski. Elsewhere the same text speaks of “33 paintings and prints”, so treat the figure as approximate. The year fits the entry from the artist’s notebook of 30 August 1992 that opens the museum’s own text, in which he hopes a trip to Kazimierz will let him concentrate on drawing.

The curators are Dorota Seweryn-Puchalska, who runs the Temporary Exhibitions Gallery, and Adam Jaśkiewicz, working with the Stanisław Fijałkowski Foundation, which has looked after the artist’s estate since 2023. The show opened on 2 August and the curator’s tour took place on 22 August 2026. On Sunday 18 October the two curators held a dialogue in the gallery. The museum billed it as a talk on how the show was built and how the Kazimierz drawings were found, and added that the show includes works never exhibited before. The museum has announced no further events.

Allow 30 to 45 minutes. That is our estimate; the museum gives no visiting time.

Context

Stanisław Fijałkowski (1922-2020) was born in Zdołbunów in Volhynia, now Zdolbuniv in Ukraine, studied from 1946 to 1951 at the art school in Łódź under Władysław Strzemiński and taught there until 1993; he is counted among the “Strzemiński circle” of the Łódź avant-garde. From the late 1950s he painted abstractly, yet built his pictures out of signs - circles, softened triangles, rhythms and numerals - in cycles such as “Wąwozy” (“Ravines”), “Studia Talmudyczne” (“Talmudic Studies”) and “Autostrady” (“Motorways”), and from the 1980s he dated his paintings instead of giving them titles. He represented Poland at the São Paulo Biennial in 1969 and the Venice Biennale in 1972, and his work is held by, among others, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate in London.

Tickets and time

Temporary Exhibitions Gallery ticket: 10 PLN standard, 5 PLN reduced, 25 PLN family (two adults and at least two children under 18). Children under 7 go in free.

Do not buy it separately if you are also seeing the goldsmiths’ collection. The director’s order on admission prices states that a ticket bought at the Goldsmith Museum (18 PLN, in the same building at Rynek 19) or at the Celej House (17 PLN) gives free entry to the Temporary Exhibitions Gallery. The order dates from 31 March 2025, but the museum’s current price page still shows the same prices and links to it. It allows a separate price for an individual temporary show; the museum has announced none for this one.

The museum pass costs 50 PLN (reduced 45 PLN), admits you once to every permanent and temporary exhibition of the museum and is valid for a year from purchase.

Free admission: for each month the museum names one day of the week on which entry is free throughout that month, and announces it on its visitor page by the last day of the month before. It covers permanent and temporary exhibitions in all branches, the Temporary Exhibitions Gallery included, so this show too. The rule applies to individual visitors; groups need a booking on those days.

Hours: according to the museum’s notice of 1 October , all branches, this gallery included, open 9:00-16:00 (9 AM to 4 PM) and are closed on Tuesdays; these hours hold until the show closes. The gallery is shut on 1 and 11 November, and ticket desks stop selling half an hour before closing, so arrive by 15:30 at the latest. The gallery’s own page still gives the old summer hours, daily 10:00-17:00 until 31 October; do not plan a Tuesday visit or one after 15:30 on the strength of it.

Access: the building has a ramp, a lift and an accessible toilet.

English on site: the museum says nothing about English labels, an audio guide or English tours for this show. Its opening-hours table is in Polish and English.

Worth it if you know Fijałkowski’s abstract paintings or want to see how a drawing turns into a print. Families with small children will get more from the Natural History Museum in the Ulanowski Granary, and anyone after pictures of Kazimierz itself from the colony painters at the Celej House.

See also

• Vistula Museum in Kazimierz Dolny - the profile with all five branches, prices and the free-day rule.
• …and Beauty Remains / Artistic Jewellery by Danka Czapnik - a show at the Goldsmith Museum in the same building, until 31 December 2026; the goldsmiths’ ticket also opens the gallery with Fijałkowski’s drawings.
• Landed / On Arriving in Places and in Oneself - Debora Medici-Guetta’s hand-woven photographs at the Celej House, until the end of November 2026; a ticket there also admits you to the Temporary Exhibitions Gallery.
• Artist of Life. Wiesław Ochman - paintings by the tenor at the Kuncewicz House, until 11 November 2026; painting shown not in a gallery but in the rooms of the writer Maria Kuncewiczowa’s villa.

Museum profile: Vistula Museum in Kazimierz Dolny .