CLOSE-UP: Feliks ‘Manggha’ Jasieński and His Collection
Europe – Far East Gallery
01.12.2024 - 30.03.2025
Close-up: Feliks ‘Manggha’ Jasieński and His Collection is the Manggha Museum’s anniversary exhibition highlighting the phenomenon of this extraordinary collector. The exhibition’s structure is built through close-ups – like film-set frames – of characteristic works and phenomena in Jasieński’s collection: The Feliks Jasieński Museum, Nehan-zu: Buddha’s Nirvana, Chinese Tea and Japanese Art Are Two Different Things, Nature, and A Japanese Man Is an Artist-Knight. For the first time in the history of the Manggha Museum, its Europe–Far East Gallery is showcasing Japanese and Chinese, Polish and European art, both old and modern, much like it was in Jasieński’s own flat, where various works of art and decorative crafts were one, irrespective of their geographic and historic origins.
The works from the collection of Feliks Jasieński and other collectors shown in this exhibition are the property of the National Museum in Krakow.
In early 1902, the collector took a flat in the house on the corner of the Market Square and St John’s Street, which was soon to become one of the most important spots in the city for Krakow’s art lovers. Visited and admired, photographed on many occasions, this flat/museum also received enthusiastic write-ups and descriptions. Its interior’s attraction was its diversity, given that art from East and West, modern and old, was amassed within a single space, engaging in intriguing visual relationships.
Buddhism, which permeates and informs nearly all spheres of Japanese life and culture, and provides a key to understanding both them and the people, inspired and continues to inspire Western thought in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The National Museum in Krakow holds the largest collection of Japanese Buddhist art: paintings (mostly scrolls), sculptures, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and temple textiles.
Chinese art was not at the centre of Feliks Jasieński’s interests as a collector, which may be why he accumulated a mere 110 items of such provenance. The best known among these include a 19th-century Qing Dynasty longpao robe patterned with eight five-clawed dragons, the garment in which the collector was portrayed by the painter Leon Wyczółkowski.
The most significant and precious assembly of Chinese art at the National Museum in Krakow is one of 163 ceramic wares accumulated by Julian Ignacy Nowak, a medical doctor, bacteriologist and patron of art. His collection is composed of pieces of excellent artistic quality, spanning a period from the Han to the Qing Dynasties, comparable with well-known holdings of Chinese art in Europe.
They are interested in the whole world around them: from an ant on a blade of grass and a spider’s web to sky-high, dark coniferous woods and groves of pliant bamboos, rustling with subtle, elongated leaves, which should be reproduced with a single stroke of brush dipped in ink, cities swarming with multicoloured crowds, tranquil villages spattered around the mirrors of lakes, sheltered in the cool and fragrant moist of ravines, where waterfalls roar and glisten with white foam, under the walls of bulky low castles.
Feliks Jasieński, 1911
One of the ‘close-ups’ looks at military artefacts, as to Manggha they were crucial for his struggle for a national style in art, and also decisive for the unique character of his collection as such objects play the most important part in it, together with woodblock prints. One of Jasieński’s famous statements perfectly illustrates this:
A Japanese man – is an artist-knight.
Feliks Jasieński’s collection comprises 15,000 items, including paintings by Malczewski, Wyspiański, Wyczółkowski, Stanisławski, and others; European prints (by Goya, Redon, and Gauguin, among others); and also assemblies of textiles, folk art, handicraft, and furniture.
Its Far Eastern core is a group of roughly 6,800 objects of Japanese art and crafts: 5,200 woodblock prints, about 800 militaria, a small assembly of paintings, sculptures and ceramics, textiles, lacquerware, bronze wares, and many other items. There are also artefacts from China, India, and Indonesia.
The main focus of the collector’s interest was the oeuvre of Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), coming to about 2,000 prints in Jasieński’s collection. There are also works by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), including such iconic series as Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and the legendary Hokusai’s Sketches (Hokusai manga), from which Jasieński took his sobriquet. Jasieński’s collection also includes sets of woodblock prints by other ukiyo-e artists, such as Utamaro, Kuniyoshi, Kunisada, and Sharaku.
In 1920 Jasieński gifted his collection to the city of Krakow, which then transferred it to the National Museum. However, his greatest dream was ‘a Japanese Museum in Krakow’, which came true when the initiative of Andrzej Wajda and Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda led to the construction of the Manggha Museum on a bank of the Vistula in 1994, where Jasieński’s Japanese collection has been deposited ever since.
The works from the collection of Feliks Jasieński and other collectors shown in this exhibition are the property of the National Museum in Krakow.
The Feliks Jasieński Museum
In early 1902, the collector took a flat in the house on the corner of the Market Square and St John’s Street, which was soon to become one of the most important spots in the city for Krakow’s art lovers. Visited and admired, photographed on many occasions, this flat/museum also received enthusiastic write-ups and descriptions. Its interior’s attraction was its diversity, given that art from East and West, modern and old, was amassed within a single space, engaging in intriguing visual relationships.
Nehan-zu: Buddha’s Nirvana
Buddhism, which permeates and informs nearly all spheres of Japanese life and culture, and provides a key to understanding both them and the people, inspired and continues to inspire Western thought in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The National Museum in Krakow holds the largest collection of Japanese Buddhist art: paintings (mostly scrolls), sculptures, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and temple textiles.
Chinese Tea and Japanese Art Are Two Different Things
Chinese art was not at the centre of Feliks Jasieński’s interests as a collector, which may be why he accumulated a mere 110 items of such provenance. The best known among these include a 19th-century Qing Dynasty longpao robe patterned with eight five-clawed dragons, the garment in which the collector was portrayed by the painter Leon Wyczółkowski.
The most significant and precious assembly of Chinese art at the National Museum in Krakow is one of 163 ceramic wares accumulated by Julian Ignacy Nowak, a medical doctor, bacteriologist and patron of art. His collection is composed of pieces of excellent artistic quality, spanning a period from the Han to the Qing Dynasties, comparable with well-known holdings of Chinese art in Europe.
Nature
They are interested in the whole world around them: from an ant on a blade of grass and a spider’s web to sky-high, dark coniferous woods and groves of pliant bamboos, rustling with subtle, elongated leaves, which should be reproduced with a single stroke of brush dipped in ink, cities swarming with multicoloured crowds, tranquil villages spattered around the mirrors of lakes, sheltered in the cool and fragrant moist of ravines, where waterfalls roar and glisten with white foam, under the walls of bulky low castles.
Feliks Jasieński, 1911
A Japanese Man Is an Artist-Knight
One of the ‘close-ups’ looks at military artefacts, as to Manggha they were crucial for his struggle for a national style in art, and also decisive for the unique character of his collection as such objects play the most important part in it, together with woodblock prints. One of Jasieński’s famous statements perfectly illustrates this:
A Japanese man – is an artist-knight.
A triune ideal in his soul: honour, homeland, art.
And then his weapon: a sword; and this sword is a work of art.
Feliks Jasieński’s collection comprises 15,000 items, including paintings by Malczewski, Wyspiański, Wyczółkowski, Stanisławski, and others; European prints (by Goya, Redon, and Gauguin, among others); and also assemblies of textiles, folk art, handicraft, and furniture.
Its Far Eastern core is a group of roughly 6,800 objects of Japanese art and crafts: 5,200 woodblock prints, about 800 militaria, a small assembly of paintings, sculptures and ceramics, textiles, lacquerware, bronze wares, and many other items. There are also artefacts from China, India, and Indonesia.
The main focus of the collector’s interest was the oeuvre of Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), coming to about 2,000 prints in Jasieński’s collection. There are also works by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), including such iconic series as Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and the legendary Hokusai’s Sketches (Hokusai manga), from which Jasieński took his sobriquet. Jasieński’s collection also includes sets of woodblock prints by other ukiyo-e artists, such as Utamaro, Kuniyoshi, Kunisada, and Sharaku.
In 1920 Jasieński gifted his collection to the city of Krakow, which then transferred it to the National Museum. However, his greatest dream was ‘a Japanese Museum in Krakow’, which came true when the initiative of Andrzej Wajda and Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda led to the construction of the Manggha Museum on a bank of the Vistula in 1994, where Jasieński’s Japanese collection has been deposited ever since.
Anna Król
HONORARY PATRONAGE
