Figurative Works from the Zamek Group Circle: Jerzy Durakiewicz, Tytus Dzieduszycki-Sas

Lublin’s Zamek Group is remembered for abstract “matter painting”, but its members started out drawing and painting people. This display in the National Museum’s permanent gallery pulls out that early, figurative phase in two of them, Jerzy Durakiewicz and Tytus Dzieduszycki-Sas. It is on at Lublin Castle until 1 November 2026. The museum publishes the description in Polish only, so the quotation below is our translation.

The National Museum in Lublin on the exhibition:

Early figurative works from the circle of the Zamek Group by Jerzy Durakiewicz and Tytus Dzieduszycki-Sas show the beginnings of the group’s activity and the formal and thematic searching that came before its turn towards more experimental practice. Still rooted in the tradition of representation, these works reveal an interest in the human figure, in expressive gesture and in the tension between realism and its deliberate transformation, making it possible to trace how the artists’ visual language evolved.

What to expect

This is not a separate temporary exhibition but a display set inside the permanent gallery “Zamek Group and the Avant-garde”. It belongs to a year-long series marking the museum’s 120th anniversary: since late March 2026, short presentations of gifts from the collection rotate through the castle’s rooms. The museum gives neither the number of works nor their titles.

The point of the display only becomes clear against the rooms around it. The permanent gallery tells the Zamek Group’s story through abstraction, texture and the painting treated as an object; this display steps back to the human figure and the gesture the group started from. The same gallery also holds a display of Tomasz Zawadzki, a contemporary abstract painter the museum places in the group’s tradition, until 3 January 2027. In one gallery, then, you get the beginnings, the mature phase and a present-day continuation.

The museum does not say which works are hanging. Its own pages do show what early work by both artists it owns. In 2017 it bought 40 works by Dzieduszycki-Sas, from conventional views made before he joined the group, such as a 1954 watercolour of Lublin’s Dominican church, to his Paris assemblages. A year earlier it acquired 21 drawings and prints by Durakiewicz, mostly in mixed water-based media.

One inconsistency in the sources. The museum’s programme of curator-led tours for 20 June 2026 already listed a tour of “Figurative works: Jerzy Durakiewicz and Tytus Dzieduszycki-Sas”, although the series schedule gives the display a start date of 7 August. We follow the schedule. The museum has announced no further tours of this display.

Context

The Zamek Group grew out of the Circle of Young Artists, founded in Lublin by art history students at the Catholic University (KUL), and worked as a group from 1957 to 1960; its first home was a set of studios in Lublin Castle (“zamek” means castle). Most members were amateurs, and the critic Jerzy Ludwiński edited the group’s magazine, “Struktury”. A 1957 show at the Krzywe Koło gallery in Warsaw made its name nationally, and Borowski, Dzieduszycki and Ziemski now count among Poland’s leading exponents of matter painting.

Jerzy Durakiewicz (1934-2016) joined the circle while studying interior architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and worked in publishing graphic design for the rest of his life. Tytus Dzieduszycki-Sas (1934-1973) left for Paris in 1959, joined Édouard Jaguer’s “Phases” movement and later turned to kinetic art and design. He died in a car accident in Paris in 1973.

Tickets and time

There is no separate ticket for the display. The museum’s price list does not mention the anniversary displays, and the “Zamek Group and the Avant-garde” gallery is one of the permanent exhibitions. On that reading, the permanent exhibitions ticket covers it: 20 PLN standard, 15 PLN reduced. A combined ticket for the permanent exhibitions, the chapel and the tower costs 40 PLN (30 PLN reduced) and is sold only at the museum’s ticket desk. Children under 7 go free.

Free-entry days are announced month by month on the museum’s Visit page (Polish). They cover the permanent exhibitions, this gallery included, and the chapel, but not the tower.

Winter hours apply from 1 October: Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday 9:00-17:00, Friday and Saturday 9:00-18:00. Until 30 September the gallery stays open an hour longer. The permanent exhibitions are closed on Mondays; the chapel and the tower open, but this gallery does not. The last day, 1 November, is a Sunday and also All Saints’ Day, a public holiday, and the museum has not published hours for it. Do not leave your visit to the last day.

Allow 15-20 minutes for the display itself, or about 45 minutes with the rest of the Zamek Group gallery and the Zawadzki display. The exhibitions are on three floors linked by two lifts and a platform lift; the museum says the tower is the only part of the building not accessible to visitors with reduced mobility. A free audio guide app covers the permanent exhibitions, but the museum does not say whether it includes the anniversary displays.

English on site: the museum’s English website lists the gallery as “Gallery of ‘Zamek’ (‘Castle’) group and the avant-garde”, but the page on the anniversary displays is in Polish only, and the museum says nothing about English labels for this display or about the audio guide’s languages. Treat it as a visual display.

Who it is for: anyone who knows the Zamek Group’s abstract work and wants to see where it came from, art history students, and anyone touring the castle’s permanent exhibitions anyway. Who can skip it: if post-war Polish art leaves you cold, do not make a special trip - this is a display within a permanent gallery, not a separate exhibition.

See also

• National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) - the venue: nine permanent exhibitions, the Holy Trinity Chapel with frescoes completed in 1418, and the keep with its viewing terrace.
• Tomasz Zawadzki - a display in the same gallery, on until 3 January 2027: contemporary abstraction grown from the Zamek Group tradition.
• Tamara Lempicka - Beyond Borders - a temporary exhibition at the castle on a separate 40 PLN ticket (20 PLN reduced); together with the permanent exhibitions ticket, which covers this display, you pay 60 PLN.
• Labirynt Gallery - the city gallery whose collection includes Zamek Group works; the museum links the group to the later conceptual experiments shown there.

Prices are on the National Museum in Lublin’s price list (Polish), and the full series schedule is on the anniversary displays page (Polish).

Museum profile: National Museum in Lublin (Lublin Castle) .