The exhibition "Migrant avant-garde. Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Franciszka Themerson, Stefan Themerson" presented at the Szklarnia Gallery is an encouragement to look at the sources of the avant-garde, to reflect on the achievements of those who were in their twenties while creating their own film artistic manifestos, and were therefore peers of most of the current students of the Lodz Film School. The exhibition reminds us that regardless of the time in which artists live and create, even when acting in the most radical ways, their art can still have an impact. Despite the passage of time, it speaks of the universality of the message, where parallel contexts emerging with subsequent generations of creators can trigger new forms and develop film structures belonging to the universe of art. Although only a fragment of the vast range of film, photographic, drawing, sound and literary achievements of these avant-garde creators is being presented, we deeply believe in the sense of expanding knowledge about the past, which is to serve the continuous acquisition of awareness of the basics of creating film, but not only the avant-garde.

The common denominator for the diverse avant-garde film community both in the world and in Poland was the fight to treat avant-garde cinema as art. Among the representatives of the Polish film avant-garde, its most important representatives are Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, whose work has become a colourful, multi-threaded background for presenting the artistic activities and the creators themselves, the American avant-garde Maya Deren and Jonas Mekas. The key element of the exhibition is the nomadism of the artists, which resulted in mutual transplants, and exchanges of thoughts and ideas, which left a lasting trace, triggering the actions of subsequent generations of artists on their way to defining their own alphabet of art, thus creating a captivating universe of art.

The exhibition will feature films by Franciszka and Stefan Themerson: "The Adventure of a Good Citizen This Means that There Is No Hole in the Sky If You Go Backwards", 1937 ", "Calling Mr. Smith", 1943, "The Eye and the Ear", 1944 - 1945; Martina Kudláček's documentary "In the Mirror of Maya Deren", 2002 and Harold Channer's interview with Jonas Mekas for the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, 2016. The exhibition "Migrant Avant-Garde. Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, Franciszka Themerson, Stefan Themerson" at the Szklarnia Gallery would not have been possible without the help of Mrs. Małgorzata Sada, for which we are very grateful.

Exhibition curators: Anna Maria Leśniewska Wojciech Puś
16.02 – 15.03. 2024 Szklarnia Gallery, Lodz Film School
Exhibition opening: 16, February, 6 p.m.