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SUMMARY:“Wajda / Japan / Sketches” at Gallery Platan
UID:https://instytutpolski.pl/budapest/pl/2026/10/13/wajda-japan-sketches-at-gallery-platan/
LOCATION:
DTSTAMP:20261013
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Warsaw:20261013
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Warsaw:20261231
DESCRIPTION:The title of the exhibition is formed at the point where three words
intersect. The same triad also structures the exhibition itself: Andrzej
Wajda, his personal and artistic discovery of Japan, and his sketches as a
mode of seeing, remembering and creating. The exhibition pays tribute to
Andrzej Wajda (1926–2016), the Honorary Academy Award-winning Polish film
and theatre director, on the centenary of his birth. Wajda’s name is
familiar in Hungary, yet his oeuvre is no longer an immediately
self-evident point of reference. His filmography — including Ashes and
Diamonds, Man of Marble, Man of Iron and Katyń — could in itself form
the subject of a major exhibition, as could his work as a theatre director.
This exhibition, however, is not primarily about Wajda the film director.
It presents another, less familiar figure: the draughtsman trained in the
visual arts, the traveller, the mediator of Japanese culture, and the man
who devoted several decades of his life to an exceptionally noble cause.
Wajda first encountered Japan through art in Kraków in 1944, at the age of
eighteen, when, under the Nazi German occupation of the city, he saw an
exhibition of Japanese works from the collection of Feliks “Manggha”
Jasieński. The world of Japanese woodblock prints — the visual thinking
of Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro and other masters — left a lifelong
impression on him. Wajda only reached Japan for the first time in 1970. He
later returned six more times, usually together with his wife, Krystyna
Zachwatowicz-Wajda. During these journeys, Japan became for him not a
distant attraction, but a gradually personal place: a network of gardens,
temples, theatrical experiences, urban details, friendships and impressions
fixed in drawings. In 1987, he received the prestigious Kyoto Prize of the
Inamori Foundation and donated the entire prize money to the establishment
of a Japanese art centre in Kraków. As a result, the Manggha Museum of
Japanese Art and Technology — a permanent display opportunity for the
invaluable Japanese art collection of Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński —
opened in 1994.
The major focus of the exhibition places Wajda as a draughtsman at the
centre. The works made during his Japanese journeys are small-scale
drawings on paper, often preserved on lined or squared notebook pages and
in sketchbooks. Their techniques are deliberately modest and portable: pen,
pencil, coloured pencil, felt-tip pen, black chalk, and, in some cases,
watercolour or other tools suitable for use while travelling. These sheets
are not representative works made under studio conditions, but visual notes
created on the move and through observation on site. Their small scale,
portability, and fragmentary character emphasise the process of drawing
itself: Wajda does not create large compositions but records visual
thoughts.
In interpreting the Japanese sketches, it is particularly important to
recognise that they bring together several kinds of gaze. On the one hand,
they reveal Wajda the director: drawing functions as a tool of framing,
spatial organisation, and theatrical and cinematic thinking. This includes
sheets that evoke Japanese theatrical forms, performance situations, stage
movements, or the network of connections that emerged between Wajda and the
Japanese film and theatre worlds. On the other hand, they show Wajda the
traveller: the drawings are impressions recorded on site, quick reminders,
and visual notes on a culture that was initially unfamiliar to him but
gradually became personal. Thirdly, they reveal Wajda the visual artist: in
those textless drawings that do not explain but seek the aesthetic density
of what is seen – the expressive force of line, empty surface,
proportion, rhythm, and framing.
The exhibition’s image of Japan is built from this threefold perspective.
In Wajda’s drawings, Japan does not appear as an encyclopaedic or
touristic totality, but as a sequence of details, motifs, and visual
situations. Temples, gardens, urban spaces, theatrical experiences,
figures, and everyday scenes become visible through the filter of artistic
attention. The drawings often reveal compositional principles familiar from
Japanese woodblock prints: asymmetry, the highlighting of detail, bold
cropping, planarity, and simplified form. The aim of the exhibition,
however, is not to interpret Wajda’s drawings as imitations of Japanese
works, but to show that these sheets are active, interpretive responses by
a European artist to Japanese visual culture. (Mirjam Dénes curator)
The exhibition is organised in collaboration with:
Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology Kraków, MKiDN (Ministry of
Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland), WFDiF
(Documentary and Feature Film Studio in Poland), Nemzeti Filmintézet –
Filmarchívum (National Film Institute Hungary – Film Archive), Dr.
DÉNES Lukács, Kultindex Nonprofi t Kft., Japán Alapítvány (Japan
Foundation), Hopp Ferenc Ázsiai Muvészeti Múzeum (Ferenc Hopp Museum of
Asiatic Arts)
On view till December 31, 2026.
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