iAlte NationalgalerieMitte
The National Museum in Warsaw opens a new guest series with “Inventing Myths”, showing Polish masters such as Malczewski and Matejko on the first floor.
A young man in yellow-green pulls the petals off a chamomile flower, and the pouch on his belt holds tubes of paint where the bullets should be. On one side an old woman in dark robes has her hands in shackles; on the other, a half-naked girl is breaking hers. That is Jacek Malczewski's Polish Hamlet from 1903, the work the museum puts first.
It is one cabinet on the first floor: eight works from the National Museum in Warsaw, running from the 19th century to now, including a Matejko portrait of three of his children, Ruszczyc's Old House and Jarosław Modzelewski's Self-Portrait with Pigments. Andrzej Wróblewski's 1956 painting is titled Waiting Room I, The Queue Continues, a title any Berliner refreshing the Bürgeramt booking page will understand.
You walk out straight into Door to History, the new room on the gallery's own past. Come for eight paintings, not a survey of Polish art. Entry is €16 (€8 concessions), with a free brochure, Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00.
Malczewski, Polish Hamlet (1903)
Look for the tubes of paint in the young man's belt pouch where bullets should be, as he picks at a chamomile between a shackled old woman and a girl breaking free.
Wróblewski, Waiting Room I, The Queue Continues (1956)
People sit one behind another in a waiting room, a young woman with a baby on her lap among them, under an arrow on the wall pointing right.
You want a survey of Polish painting: this is eight works in a single cabinet.