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’When I travelled to Maastricht during my studies to visit TEFAF, I was immediately sold. I knew: one day I will be here. I didn’t care how, even if it was through an internship. I went after my dream and started a gallery in Warsaw six years ago, together with Michał Olszewski. Through him, I was introduced to Polish modern art, an art form that is rare in Poland, as most galleries exhibit contemporary art. I found out that there are so many artists to rediscover. I am so grateful that my dream has come true, and that I get to work with passionate, talented people. My biggest piece of advice for being successful? Stay true to yourself. If people see that you care about something, they will want to help you. AND, never forget to put things in black and white. That has been my biggest lesson during my career.’

Giuseppe Romagnoli’s Broken Thinker reveals, at the beginning of the 20th century, the
inspiration of Rodin (Aleandri Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy), but in a far more contorted version
— one that reacts to inner pain and darkness — while the shamanic beasts of Domicella
Bożekowska (Małgorzata Ciacek Gallery, Warsaw) howl and twist in dances and acrobatics
that are as contemporary as they are primal. On the digital front, under the curatorship of
Rebecca Russo, the Butterfly exhibition is presented, featuring a multitude of works and
installations by video artists including Janet Biggs, Emilia Faro, Kate Gilmore, Masbedo, Hans
Op de Beeck, and Carl von Pfeil, supported by a photographic project by Enzo Obiso.

The artists present at the fair, who coexist within the habitat of Flashback Art Fair, are often
distant in time but close in spirit. Giuseppe Romagnoli (Aleandri Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy),
Domicella Bożekowska (Małgorzata Ciacek Gallery, Warsaw), Alessandro Bulgini (Gaza
Opera Viva), Alexander Mostafa Fazari (Compassione), and the Baroque painter known as
Il Genovesino (Galleria Canesso, Paris and Milan) all meet at a precise point: the urgency
to intervene in the world, to make art a form of testimony. The artwork is no longer just
representation, but resistance. Not only form, but a stance.

One of the few stands that has created a true exhibition. The display brings together the
evocative paintings of Barbara Levittoux–Świderska, which capture the streets of 1980s
Warsaw, and the sculptures of Domicella Bożekowska, dedicated to a wolf from the Bieszczady
Mountains rescued and cared for by the artist. Bound by a shared creative vision, the two
artists lived and worked closely together in Żoliborz, a district of Warsaw. The exhibition
unfolds as a story of kindred spirits, exploring the dialogue between art, nature, and human
emotion. A moving and unmissable gem is Bożekowska’s Running (1970).

Among the artists featured at the fair are Giuseppe Romagnoli (Aleandri Arte Moderna,
Rome, Italy), Domicella Bożekowska (Małgorzata Ciacek Gallery, Warsaw), Alessandro Bulgini
(Gaza Opera Viva), Alexander Mostafa Fazari (Compassione), and the Baroque painter Il
Genovesino (Galleria Canesso, Paris and Milan) — all united by the urgency to intervene in
the world, to make art a form of testimony.

Directed by Ginevra Pucci and Stefania Poddighe, with artistic direction by Alessandro
Bulgini, the thirteenth edition of the fair is deliberately Untitled, with the aim of transcending
temporal and social hierarchies through dialogue among the languages and explorations
of various artists represented by forty-eight galleries, both national and international. Among
the most notable are: Aleandri Arte Moderna of Rome, Umberto Benappi of Turin, Giammarco
Cappuzzo Fine Art of London, Kollenburg Antiquairs of Oirschot, Galleria dello Scudo of
Verona, NP ArtLab of Milan, Tower Gallery of Todi, and Małgorzata Ciacek Gallery of Warsaw
(to name just a few).

Among the artists featured at the fair are Giuseppe Romagnoli (Aleandri Arte Moderna,

Rome, Italy), Domicella Bożekowska (Małgorzata Ciacek Gallery, Warsaw), Alessandro Bul-
gini (Gaza Opera Viva), Alexander Mostafa Fazari (Compassione), and the Baroque painter

Il Genovesino (Galleria Canesso, Paris and Milan) — all united by the urgency to intervene in
the world, to make art a form of testimony.

The 2024 edition places the concept of ‚witnessing’ at its center.
The participating artists, through their works, do not merely represent the present — they
interpret it, question it, denounce it, and celebrate it.
Giuseppe Romagnoli (Aleandri Arte Moderna) and Domicella Bożekowska (Małgorzata
Ciacek Gallery) engage in dialogue with Alexander Mostafa Fazari (Compassione) and

the Baroque vision of Il Genovesino (Galleria Canesso), creating a complex and thought-
provoking artistic fabric. The reflection on matter is elevated to an ethical dimension.

On the other hand, melancholy pervades the sensual odalisque by Francesco Hayez
(Bottegantica), whose poignant allure speaks of a femininity that is idealized yet imprisoned.
Femininity is also expressed in the cascade of vivid red and bright purple that flows through
the anti-textiles of Wojciech Sadley (Małgorzata Ciacek Gallery), where tangled threads
weave a fabric of primordial sensuality, evoking a supernatural anatomy.

Concrete numbers: 48 galleries involved, pavilions B and C as the main axes, and public
events spread over four days (October 30–November 2). Among the participating galleries
are both Italian institutions (from Aleandri Arte Moderna to Galleria d’Arte L’Incontro) and
international presences (from Małgorzata Ciacek Gallery, Warsaw, to galleries from London
and Paris). This curatorial geography makes the fair an observatory that goes beyond the
simple economics of art: here, the market meets critical practice, and dialogue with the public
becomes a measure of meaning.

Materials, forms, and symbols intermingle: the fifteenth-century wooden-sculpted Madonna
and Child (Flavio Pozzallo) meets the wild wolves of Domicella Bożekowska (Małgorzata
Ciacek); the tableaux vivants of Luigi Ontani (Galleria d’Arte l’Incontro) engage in an ideal
dialogue with the dancing dervishes of Aldo Mondino (Galleria Umberto Benappi), while
Dürer’s engravings (Il Cartiglio) recall the archetypal power of the line. The guiding images
of the art fair, Iafet and Mister Marshmallow, are signed by Antonello Bulgini — an artist who
passed away prematurely in 2011 and brother of the artistic director Alessandro Bulgini.

Myth, metamorphosis, and the bond with the ancestral emerge in the Dancers by Franz von
Stuck (Aleandri Arte Moderna) — hypnotic visions of a Dionysian dance — as well as in Marino
Marini’s Horse and Rider (Antiques Par Force), an archetype that transcends the centuries
and brushes against abstraction. From the same gallery, Antonio Gherardi’s Baroque Juno
and Argus recalls the transformation of the shepherd into a peacock, while Domicella
Bożekowska’s wolves (Małgorzata Ciacek Gallery) embody the primal and untamed force of

nature. In this continuum, with an extraordinary and seamless leap through time, the fifteenth-
century Madonna and Child (Flavio Pozzallo) also finds its place — a wooden sculpture that

restores the power of the fragment and of raw material.

The young gallery owner Małgorzata Ciacek , founder of the exhibition space opened last November, proposes new dialogues between masters of modern art. After the homage to the conceptual artist Włodzimierz Jan Zakrzewski , it is the turn of an imaginary comparison that breaks down geographical and cultural boundaries. Although the two artists never met, their biographies seem to mirror each other. Both born in 1932, their childhoods were marked by the horrors of the Second World War: Sadley in Warsaw, miraculously surviving a bombing; Sonnino in Rome, in a climate oppressed by racial laws. They began their journey in the field of painting, but it was in textiles that they found a tool capable of giving shape to profound and often unspeakable experiences .

From May 27 to July 15, 2025, the Ciacek Gallery in Warsaw hosts 
Imaginary Conversation , an exhibition that for the first time brings together the works of 
Wojciech Sadley and Franca Sonnino , both born in 1932 and who, as children, witnessed the wounds of war. Although they never met, their paths touched: painting at the origins, then the choice of textiles as a means to investigate memory, spirituality, identity. 

At the exhibition Wojciech Sadley / Franca Sonnino: Imaginary Conversation / Konwersacja Wyobrazona at the Ciacek Gallery, the work of Italian artist Franca Sonnino (Rome, 1932) will be presented for the first time alongside pieces by the doyen of the Polish textile school, Wojciech Sadley (Lublin, 1932–2023, Warsaw). Curated by Małgorzata Ciacek and Elena Caslini, the exhibition explores the complex—though not always obvious—relationships between the artistic practices of the two creators, highlighting their shared themes and formal affinities. The display will include early works by both artists from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The variety of media used further enriches the experience. In addition to painting, sculpture, drawing and photography, the works on display also include textiles and installations: from Mirco Cattai’s precious Persian carpets to Sadley’s (Małgorzata Ciacek Gallery) ‘anti-textiles’, which mix woven nets with wood and metal, inspired by totems and magical symbols.

40 galleries were present. Three new entries, all of them first-class, the Swiss De Jonckheere with unique pieces of Flemish art, the Belgian Floris Van Wanroij and the Polish Malgorzata Ciacek.

Ciacek Gallery instead presents Wojciech Sadley, with a series of works created between 1960 and 1973, when the artist last participated in the Lousanne International Textile Biennale. The works, sculptural in wool and silk, symbolically depict the moment before conception, the mythical creation of a new life.


The feminine is also expressed by the cascade of bright red and flamboyant purple flowing through Wojciech Sadley’s (Malgorzata Ciacek Gallery) anti-textiles, where tangled threads weave a web of primordial sensuality, evoking a supernatural anatomy. In ‘She’, Sadley explores a feminine suspended between dream and reality, between social expectations of control and containment and the instinctive, ancestral desire that inhabits every woman, every human being.


The feminine is also expressed by the cascade of bright red and flamboyant purple flowing through Wojciech Sadley’s (Malgorzata Ciacek Gallery) anti-textiles, where tangled threads weave a web of primordial sensuality, evoking a supernatural anatomy. In ‘She’, Sadley explores a feminine suspended between dream and reality, between social expectations of control and containment and the instinctive, ancestral desire that inhabits every woman, every human being.


For the first time, an art dealer from Poland participates in TEFAF. Olszewski | Ciacek is the only gallery worldwide dedicated to Polish modernism. A niche one, as Warsaw came out of World War II heavy-handed, during which many works of art were also lost. After the war horrors, communist rule pushed modern art further into oblivion.


The prestigious Maastricht Art Fair is celebrating its 37th edition. Such longevity naturally calls for renewal. This is now the case with the Showcase section and the launch of the Focus platform, both of which welcome astonishing young galleries representing different eras of art galleries representing a variety of periods.


Since 9 March, the prestigious TEFAF fair has been taking place in Maastricht. For the first time, a gallery from Poland – Olszewski | Ciacek – is among the exhibitors. And it is a debut in impressive style – the Warsaw gallery was awarded the J.P. Morgan prize!

A new initiative this year, the first ever J.P. Morgan Private Bank Showcase Prize was awarded to Olszewski | Ciacek, the first Polish gallery to exhibit at TEFAF Maastricht. Olszewski | Ciacek is also the first Warsaw-based gallery to exhibit artists with a focus on Central European avant-garde movements, as well as the most important works of Polish artists from the mid-twentieth century.

‘You should take a look upstairs,’ H. calls out to me when we bump into each other at TEFAF. ‘A Polish gallery!’ Arriving upstairs, I can hardly believe my eyes. Tucked away in a corner is the stand of Olszewski Ciacek, a fairly young gallery from Warsaw participating in Tefaf for the first time. It is in any case the first time a Polish art gallery has presented itself at Tefaf – and how!

Poland’s first TEFAF exhibitor, Olszewski | Ciacek Gallery, is run by a woman, among others; the gallery specialises in Polish modernism. Owner Malgorzata Ciacek founded the Warsaw-based gallery five years ago with her companion Michal Olszewski, as the duo missed attention to art from the last century. In doing so, they shine their light on an – in their view – underrated era. Here, on the left, we see a work by Karol Hiller.

Błażej Rusin creates kaleidoscopic frescos on the walls of abandoned buildings throughout East-Central Europe. Influenced by his origins in the eastern Poland as well the history of the many displaced peoples of this historically multiethnic region, Rusin carefully removes his works—sometimes with bits of plaster—and displays them as mobile wall hangings. At Olszewski Gallery, Rusin’s works are presented alongside the work of 90-year-old artist Wojciech Sadley, an important figure in the Polish School of Textiles from the same region who also painted on easily transportable materials including cloth and parchment. Ranging from €5,000 to €6,000 ($5,000 to $6,000), Rusin’s monumental works, which he describes as “post-graffiti,” are exuberant celebrations of pattern, shape, and color that nod to the medley of cultural influences and diversity of the eastern borderland region of Poland.