I Was The First Polish Surrealist! Works From 1929-39

In the era of my artistic beginnings around 1930 – the requirement was that a person was first and foremost authentic. (…) I remember that as a boy I still knew – and it was instinctive knowledge – that you cannot be “authentic” or “defined” …

Witold Gombrowicz, I was the first structuralist

In 1967 Witold Gombrowicz published an interview with himself in “Wiadomości Literackie” under the meaningful title I was the first structuralist . When answering his own questions, he explains his philosophical inspirations, adopting the language of scientific discourse, and at the same time mocks and speaks seriously. Philosophy is used in this funny little text as a way to distance yourself from yourself. I was the first structuralist is also an element of the author’s self-creation, performative game, who uses the word “creates reality”, creating his own pseudo-autobiography. Gombrowicz, while winking at us, creates an illusion that for a moment suspends the laws governing the history of philosophy and literature …

The title of my project I was the first Polish surrealist is a paraphrase of the title of Gombrowicz’s text. Following this path, I decided to travel in time to the 1930s in order to impersonate, even for a moment, a character that never existed, but that would have a chance to exist. I was the first Polish surrealist so, in a sense, it is an autobiographical project. It means being yourself and someone completely different: here and now, in 2010 and then, in the 1930s …

Was there any surrealism in interwar Poland? Did the Poles, like the French, Czechs and Mexicans, have their own surrealist photographers? I would like to pose a question about the presence (absence) of such attitudes in Polish art and photography and draw attention to the intriguing potential of the alternative history of Polish photography. It is also interesting to me that – despite the revival of “surrealistic” attitudes in Polish contemporary art – almost no one tries to address this issue: to refer to the existing (or rather: non-existent) sources of “Polish surrealism”. However, I treat the source here metaphorically, as a certain potential – a kind of an imaginary archive. Such “virtual” potential can be even unpublished or unfinished works, destroyed during World War II – how would knowing them change the history of Polish photography?

From today’s point of view, their status is intriguing, because they both “exist” and do not exist. I would like to insert my project into the field of “existence-non-existence”, into the sphere of what is possible, and therefore “real”. Let us imagine, for example, that these are the works of some of the members of the avant-garde group “Artes”, or some other completely forgotten artist, discovered after many years …

I was the first Polish surrealist is therefore an attempt to examine the existing (non-existent) sources of “Polish surrealism” and to create from its traces our own contemporary artistic autobiography. In the same way, it is located exactly halfway between the historical reconstruction and the performative gesture. Between an archival query and an autobiography. Between 1930 and 2010. Between “probable truth” and the brazen lie contained in the title.