Where the Line Becomes a Story... Witold Chomicz 1910-1984

This exhibition, translated and adapted from the museum’s Polish-language copy (the Zamoyski Museum has no dedicated English version of this page), is a monographic show on Witold Chomicz (1910-1984), a graphic artist and illustrator whose work was built around the line - its rhythm, gesture and narrative power.

The Zamoyski Museum in Kozłówka on the exhibition:

The temporary exhibition “Where the Line Becomes a Story… Witold Chomicz (1910-1984)”, organised from the collection of Mr Ziyad Raoof, is an unconventional presentation of an artistic personality seen through the lens of a varied studio practice. It does not record a chronology or lay out an artistic biography. It does not stop at a monographic treatment. It offers insight into the creative process - the stages of a work’s making, the choice of means and artistic expression, the search for technique, the making of the artwork, the materialising of the artist’s vision.

What to expect

The exhibition surveys Chomicz’s graphic and illustration work, displayed in the Kozłówka palace’s temporary exhibition rooms alongside the permanent residential collection of the Zamoyski family. Curator Monika Bordzoł chose to skip a life-story layout in favour of a workshop view: oil paintings, artistic prints, stained-glass designs, postage-stamp designs and commercial-print work hang side by side, so you see the same hand move from easel painting to postcard without a drop in craft. This rewards a visitor who likes looking closely at technique, not one hunting for a single showpiece for a photo - the effect here comes from the series, not from any one exhibit.

Tickets, opening hours and current information are available on the Zamoyski Museum in Kozłówka’s website .

Context

Witold Chomicz (1910-1984) was born in Kyiv but grew up in Lublin, where his family moved in 1920 after the Polish-Soviet War - as a schoolboy there he co-founded the avant-garde art group “Elipsa” and finished his art secondary school, which is why museum director Andrzej Pruszkowski points to the Lublin region, not Kraków, as the place that shaped him. He trained at the Kraków School of Decorative Arts and then at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts; from 1950 he was a professor at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, heading its Department of Book Graphics and training a generation of illustrators. Beyond book illustration he designed stained glass - including five windows, “Golden Age of Polish Culture and Science”, for Collegium Novum at the Jagiellonian University - as well as postage stamps and the postcard series “Historic Polish Cities”.

Tickets and time

The temporary exhibition has its own ticket, separate from the palace: 12 PLN full price, 8 PLN reduced, 10 PLN for visitors 60+. If you also want to see the palace interiors, the “all exhibitions” pass (80/60/70 PLN) is cheaper than buying both tickets separately. Note: the museum’s free Tuesday entry is stated as covering “the Palace” only - the price list does not extend it to the temporary-exhibition wing, so it most likely does not cover the Chomicz show. Allow 30-45 minutes for the graphics show alone; add more if this is your first visit and you want the palace too. This is a show for bibliophiles, print collectors and anyone curious about printmaking craft - young children are likely to get bored, since there is nothing interactive. English on site: labels for this exhibition are Polish-only; the museum’s visitor page mentions foreign-language recordings elsewhere on site, but no English-language tours or audio guide are advertised for this show specifically.

In July, August and September 2026 the museum runs curator-led tours of the exhibition, included in the exhibition ticket price with no booking required.

Events

• 27 September 2026, 12:00 - curator-led tour with Magdalena Laskowska and Monika Bordzoł, included in the exhibition ticket

What the press says

Radio Lublin (13 June 2026, JPie): covered the opening as a show about the artist’s workshop rather than his biography - article (Polish only). Curator Monika Bordzoł, in her own words: “We wanted to show his output differently than biographically (…) It was about presenting the artistic output” (translated from the Polish quote above).

Museum profile: Zamoyski Museum in Kozłówka .