Tefaf Maastricht 2024

Dominik Kuboń: The Olszewski Ciacek Gallery is the first Polish gallery to take part in TEFAF Maastricht 2024. Where did the idea come from? Why this fair? 

Małgorzata Ciacek: During my studies at the Fine & Decorative Art and Design in Lon – don’s Sotheby’s Institute of Art, we went on a student trip to Hol – land. And visited TEFAF! The world’s oldest, most prestigious fair. You can feel the strong academic support behind it. All the wellknown names at your fingertips. Every item is important to the art history discourse. Paintings by the Old Masters, 20th-century artists – along with a lot of flowers, conversation and champagne. It’s like a museum where you can buy. As you go through it, you’re always learning something new, and you get to talk with the best experts in their field. 

Michał Olszewski: I’ve been to TEFAF many times. It’s the best fair for the art we rep – resent, that is, from the canon of 20th-century historical moderni – ty. The flowers definitely make an impression. One year at the en – trance there was a huge wall made of roses, just flaunting its colour and fragrance. It was amazing!

I understand it’s a friendly space for different types of specialists to share experience: gallery and museum people, as well as collectors? 

Małgorzata Ciacek: Right. You find people from various institutions. At TEFAF museum sales are held. Museum directors from all over the world are there. At TEFAF I understood that art can be a pleasure, not just something inaccessible and closed, like in a white cube. Behind the luxury there’s kindness, education, knowledge, curiosity, openness to new ideas. It’s all clearly legible, and is in tune with our sensibility. Galleries have catalogues to supplement their displays. You don’t go there just to buy something. Every item is carefully chosen, described and given the right amount of attention. It’s an exceptional experience you can share with enthusiasts, collectors, everyone from the creative and cultural industries. 

Michał Olszewski: The exchange of competences and experience – along with social interactions – is really important. Especially since Polish art, hampered by excessive administrative provisions, is often pushed to the fringes of Europe. Quite unnecessarily, and it’s a great injustice to artists, their families, and art lovers.

You represent those families. The destiny of artistic legacies. 

Michał Olszewski: That’s right. Artistic destinies that were often cut off – for example, by the war. Under Communism, pre-war art fell into oblivion. For various reasons, including because of family or politics. In the 1990s, it seemed we were opening up to the world. And in many areas that’s how it was. Market exchange became global in nature, but art remained unaffected. Its reach was still only local.

What will people be able to see at your stand? 

Małgorzata Ciacek: Our aim is to show a cross-section of Polish art from the 20th century. We’ll be showing works associated with different Polish cities: heliographs by Karol Hiller from Łódź; close-cropped photos by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz from Zakopane; Formist gouaches and drawings by Józef Doskowski from Kraków; Légeresque and Surrealist works by Marek Włodarski from Lviv; graphics by Leopold Lewicki, also from Kraków. We also have a variety of different techniques and media, from heliographs to photography to works on paper, graphics, and even an anonymous sculpture in the Zakopane style with elements of Art Deco. 

What guided your choices? 

Małgorzata Ciacek: We wanted to emphasise how au courant the Polish avant-garde was. Trends often turned up in Poland very early on compared with other European countries, and there were artistic anomalies – like the technique Karol Hiller developed, which no one carried on after him. His works are really innovative, and were shown in the exhibition Constructivism in Poland, 1923-1936 (MoMA, 1976) and The Shape of Light – 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art (Tate Modern, 2018). Hiller’s art is recognised among academics, but could be better known by a wider public. The quality speaks for itself. Hiller was no epigone. 

In the heliographs you can feel the strong avant-garde dimension. And Witkacy was the first to make close-cropped photographs. Suddenly it turns out that a Pole who nobody abroad has heard of was first in something. 

Michał Olszewski: For year’s I’d been observing Czech Surrealists avant-garde artists at fairs. Praise, prices, catalogues, books about their work. At a certain point I understood that their level, and their artistic interests, were very similar to Włodarski’s. Légeresque elements were a foundation that he converted into Surrealism in an interesting way. Ultimately, he created very strongly Surrealistic works in a way reminiscent of those of Jindřich Štyrský, whose watercolours command prices of tens of thousands of euros, not to mention his oil paintings. For me, that was a stimulus! I thought – How is it possible that everybody knows Štyrský but nobody knows Włodarski? I tried exhibiting Włodarski in Poland, but it didn’t work out. The pandemic scuttled my plans. This process didn’t come out of Poland. Remotely, on a website, you can’t experience a work of art fully. You have to go to a fair to see things live.

An important artist at our stand is Leopold Lewicki. He used graphics to comment on the socio-political reality of the 1930s. He was interested in human dignity and human rights. Like Hiller. My private collection of heliographs was what made it possible to open the gallery in 2018. Collecting about a dozen pieces took me fifteen years. 

What was that like, collecting? 

Michał Olszewski: First I turned to other collectors who’d bought heliographs in the past. And to curators dealing with obtaining works from non-museum sources for exhibitions. Then to people who might have had contact with Hiller’s widow. It was very much detective work. In the case of artists who are no longer alive, the investigation can be small, or very serious.

Important, if not the most important, is the issue of verifying a work’s authenticity. 

Michał Olszewski: For me, the key when checking authenticity is an experienced eye. In such situations I always think of Adam Konopacki, an art market expert who taught me the basics. He said: if you come across a forgery, don’t look at it, just go on and forget about it. Otherwise the forgery will distort your vision, and later you may have difficulty accepting an original. You have to look only at things that are sure, and have that as your point of reference. The more such points of reference we have, the more we can authenticate.

Tell us about the preparations for the fair. 

Małgorzata Ciacek: I appreciate that the organisers require every work on display to be properly researched. Quality is paramount. The works we’ve chosen are impeccable in terms of execution. But preparing the texts and documents involved a lot of intellectual work. You have to write an essay, prepare a bibliography and a list of exhibitions where the works were shown, provide independent expertise. At TEFAF what counts is universal values. This shows the wisdom of the people who are involved in the fair. They have a substantive approach, and cultural capital. Without knowing Polish art, they’re able to assess it in reference to other European avant-garde movements. Such cross-references make sense, and are needed. But the most important thing behind our success is teamwork. The three of us – Małgorzata Starz, Karolina Potocka and I – have been working on this project for several months now. For me, what’s most important is people and the team; you can’t reach the summit by quarrelling – and even if you could, it wouldn’t be any fun. We all have passion and stamina, and back each other up in difficult moments – which are an inevitable part of the process. We’re doing this for the first time. I’m 30, Karolina’s 27, and Gosia’s 24. The strength we have from being together means you don’t have to be the most educated, the most experienced, or have enormous financial backup to achieve something no one did before and make a dream of yours come true. And for that I’m forever grateful to the girls.

Some fairs and exhibitions can be overwhelming. What’s it like here? Is there enough space for viewers? 

Małgorzata Ciacek: You can commune with the works in tranquillity. It’s an opportunity for intimate contact with art. You feel as if you were in a completely different dimension. Every gallery builds its own world, drawing you in, offering a different perspective. You learn a lot, experience a lot. After all, without a public fairs would have no sense.

What were the beginnings of your gallery? How did you start working together? 

Małgorzata Ciacek: The first time I met Michał was at TEFAF. 

Michał Olszewski: Right! A mutual acquaintance introduced us. 

Małgorzata Ciacek: A bit like something out of Sherlock Holmes! I was fresh out of university, Michał and his partner had gone their separate ways. We didn’t know then that in the future we’d be working together. It was a while before we started Olszewski Ciacek Gallery. 

Michał Olszewski: Earlier, I’d worked on the art market for fifteen years. I began in 2003 as a trainee at Rempex Auction House. Then I worked both in expert groups and in sales. Małgorzata and I share an interest in the avant-garde, and we have similar taste.

Dominik Kuboń


Art historian, graduate of the University of Warsaw. Independent curator, author of texts on art; deals with photography at the independent KARTA Centre, Poland’s largest social archive.