Grabowski Gallery

{{Infobox organisation

| name =Grabowski Gallery

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| formation = 1959

| dissolved = 1975

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| type = Art gallery

| status = defunct

| purpose = contemporary art exhibitions

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| location = 84 Sloane Avenue, London, {{postcode|SW|3 DZ}}

| coords = {{coords|51.4934|-0.1682|display=inline,title}}

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| leader_title = Founded by

| leader_name = Mateusz Grabowski

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The Grabowski Gallery was an avant-garde art gallery opened in 1959 in London's Chelsea by Mateusz Grabowski, anticipating the Swinging Sixties.{{cite book|title=Swingujący Londyn : kolekcja Grabowskiego |trans-title=Swinging London : collection of Grabowski |author=Adams, Ken |author2=Saciuk-Gąsowska, Anna |author3=Kurc, Paulina |author4=Grochulska, Agnieszka |display-authors=etal |place=Łódź|

publisher= Łódź Muzeum Sztuki |date=2007|oclc=233467130 |lang=pl, en}} It hosted some of the earliest shows of the rising pop art movement and was the first venue in London to bring op art to the public.{{cite book|title=British Pop Art and Postmodernism|author=Stępień, Justyna|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|date= 2015|page=129|isbn=978-1-4438-8294-1}} It launched the careers of some of Britain's and the British Commonwealth's leading exponents of two- and three-dimensional art{{cite book|title= Black Artists in British Art: A History since the 1950s|author=Chambers, Eddie|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|date= 2014|isbn= 978-0-8577-2409-0}}{{cite web|author=Grayson Ford, Sue|title=Foreword to Brave New Visions: The Émigrés who transformed the British Art World|page=7|url=https://insidersoutsidersfestival.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/BRAVE-NEW-VISIONS-online-catalogue.pdf|publisher=Insider/Outsider Festival|date=2019|access-date=2020-05-24}} and fostered émigré artists from Europe, the Caribbean and the Commonwealth.{{cite web|title=Diaspora Artists|url=http://new.diaspora-artists.net/display_item.php?id=189&table=venues&artistslink=expand#artists188277275272|publisher= new.diaspora-artists.net|access-date=2020-05-22}} By the time it closed its doors in 1975 it had mounted around two hundred shows. When the gallery closed Mateusz Grabowski donated his collection of works from the gallery to the Museum of Art in Łódź and the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland.{{cite web|title=Gifted by Mateusz Grabowski |url=https://zasoby.msl.org.pl/_dar_mateusza_grabowskiego_48|publisher=Muzeum Sztuki|place=Łódź|access-date=2020-05-26}}

History

Founded in 1959, the gallery started as a sideline of the Polish émigré pharmacist, Mateusz Grabowski (1904-1976), who had arrived in the United Kingdom as an officer of the Polish Armed Forces in 1940.{{cite web|author=Dymarczyk, Iwona|title=A Polish Pharmacist, Mateusz Bronisław Grabowski as the Owner of an Art Gallery in London (1959-1975) |url= http://www.histpharm.org/37ishp_review2005.pdf|publisher=People and Places, 37th International Congress for the History of Pharmacy 22nd June – 25th June 2005 University of Edinburgh Scotland|date=2005|access-date=2020-05-25}} After demobilisation in the late 1940s following the Second World War, Grabowski formed a pharmaceutical business, having worked as a pharmacist in Warsaw before the war.Dymarczyk I. Polskie organizacje farmaceutyczne w Wielkiej Brytanii w latach 1943-1949 [Polish pharmaceutical organisations in Great Britain in the years 1943-1949]. Arch Hist Filoz Med. 2000; 63(3-4):122‐126. His innovation in London was to create a mail order chemist to enable Polish and other resettled Central Europeans in Britain and in other parts of the Free World during the Cold War to send badly needed medicines and medical supplies to their families and friends in countries under Soviet occupation where there were persistent shortages of many everyday goods. His successful business allowed him eventually to indulge his youthful passion for art, first as a collector and subsequently as a patron, by opening a gallery next to one of his chemist outlets at 84 Sloane Avenue in Chelsea. It was an avowedly non-commercial venture. He reputedly mounted exhibitions in exchange for an artwork by the artist.{{cite web|title=Artists Biographies|author=Hassell, Geoff|url=https://www.artbiogs.co.uk/2/galleries/grabowski-gallery|publisher=www.artbiogs.co.uk|access-date=2020-05-26}} One of its earliest shows was a group exhibition of established Polish artists.{{cite web|author=Borkowski, Andrzej Maria|url=http://www.apauk.org/history|publisher=Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain (1957)|title=History of APA|access-date=2020-05-24}}

Exhibitions

The gallery became known as a pioneer of group and solo shows of recent art school graduates, including graduates of the nearby Royal College of Art, as well as artists from the British Commonwealth and established Polish émigré artists.Roberts, Keith. “London.” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 106, no. 732, 1964, pp. 137–142. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/874263. Accessed 1 June 2020. Grabowski was aided by art specialists from Poland, including the leading British Polish-born curator and critic Jasia Reichardt and the artist Stanisław Frenkiel.{{cite web|title=Inner Image - Works by the Leicester Group|author=Reichardt, Jasia|url=https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/321796|publisher=Grabowski Gallery|access-date=2020-05-29}}{{cite web|title= Exhibition Histories Talks: Jasia Reichardt|url=https://www.afterall.org/events/exhibition-histories-talks-jasia-reichardt|publisher=www.afterall.org|date=2014|access-date=2020-05-29}} Exhibition themes and titles included Image in Progress, Image in Revolt, Inner Image to MAD - Conroy Maddox and Tomorrow's Artists. Among the exhibitors were:

File:1965 OLIVER BEVAN Both Ways 1.jpg Both Ways, 1965]]

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William Apap
Anthony Benjamin
Jan Berdyszak
Oliver Bevan
Derek Boshier{{cite book|title=A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present |editor=Corbett, David Peters |editor2=Arnold, Dana |page=167|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|series=Blackwell Companions to Art History|date=2016|isbn= 9781119170112}}
Petar Hadzi Boskov
Pauline Boty
Frank Bowling
Caziel
Jozef Czapski
Pat Douthwaite
Olga Edwardes
Wojciech Fangor
Stanisław Frenkiel
Jules de Goede
Andrzej GrabowskiA posthumous tribute to the gallery owner's artist son who died at the age of just thirty. The January 1970 catalogue was written by Stanisław Frenkiel.
Maggi Hambling{{cite web|title=Jasia Reichardt - An Art Archive: Twenty Years of Correspondence, H-L|publisher=The Getty Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities|url=http://archives.getty.edu:30008/getty_images/digitalresources/reichardt/890143_Inventory_SeriesI_H_L.pdf|access-date=2020-06-01}} (Reference to Hambling's show at Grabowski, "A space at five times", shared with McEwen and Biggin in January 1970).
David Hockney{{cite web|title=Mateusz B. Grabowski requests the pleasure of your company at the private view of an exhibition "Image in Progress". Derek Boshier, David Hockney, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Max Shepard, Norman Toynton, Brian Wright. Grabowski Gallery, London on Tuesday 14th August 1962 from 5.30 p.m. to 8 p.m.|publisher=Grabowski Gallery|date=1962|url=https://pallantbookshop.com/product-category/books/|access-date=2020-05-30}} Grabowski Gallery Invitation card to an exhibition on sale (with illustration) at an online bookshop.
Tess Jaray
Allen Jones
Conroy Maddox
Victor Newsome
Robert O'Brian
Peter Phillips
Lucy Raverat
Bridget Riley
David Saunders
Magda Sawicka
Jeffrey Steele
Peter Struycken
Keith Sutton
Suzan Swale
Norman Toynton
Alan Uglow
Marc Vaux
Aubrey Williams

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Several of the gallery's exhibition catalogues from 1959 onwards are in the Special Collections of Leeds University Library, including catalogues for exhibitions by Ivor Abrahams, Michael Sandle and Michael Rothenstein.{{cite web|title=Grabowski Gallery, catalogues of various art shows|url= https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/participant/72956|access-date=2020-05-26}}

The Grabowski was one of several noted contemporary art exhibition spaces initiated by émigré Poles in London. Others were Halima Nałęcz's Drian Galleries in Bayswater, Jan Wieliczko's Centaur Gallery and, longest established, Feliks Topolski's studio and exhibition in Waterloo.