Art Nouveau related presentation in Krakow, Poland
Partage Plus team member Piotr Kopszak from the National Museum in Warsaw gave a presentation on the French-German-Polish-English interests of the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. About 20 art historians gathered in Krakow in September 2012 to attend a lecture series titled "The vernacular revival and the universal language of visual form" organized by the University of Bristol and the Jagiellonian University.
The presentation was devoted to the correspondence between French avant-guard sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and his companion Zofia Brzeska. During the lecture it was pointed out that the name of Zofia Brzeska appears also on one of the portraits by Polish Armenian Art Nouveau painter Teodor Axentowicz which gave rise to speculations that it might be the same person. This is however disproved by the evidence of the National Museum`s inventory where it is clearly stated that Zofia Brzeska - the woman in Axentowicz painting - together with her husband Jan Żarnowski donated the art work to the National Museum of Warsaw in 1932, whereas Zofia Brzeska, the companion of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, died in an asylum in London in 1925.
During this workshop participants had not only the opportunity to learn about the aims of the Partage Plus project, but also they could have a look at images the National Museum of Warsaw is going to publish in the course of the Partage Plus project.
