Polish museum exhibits U.S. artist Frank Stella’s synagogue-inspired works

An exhibition has opened in Warsaw of abstract works by prominent American painter Frank Stella that were inspired by painted wooden synagogues that once existed across Poland but were destroyed by the Nazis during World War II.

“Frank Stella and Synagogues of Historic Poland” opened Feb. 19 at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and will run through June 20.

Stella has worked as an artist for more than 60 years. His works are on display in museums and galleries across the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

He will be the subject of a major retrospective exhibition opening at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth this spring. “Frank Stella: A Retrospective” will run from April 17 to Sept. 18 and will be the most comprehensive presentation of Stella’s career to date, organizers say. It was co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

POLIN Museum officials say the synagogues exhibition is the first time that Stella’s geometrical and highly abstract works have been shown alongside the sources that inspired him — architectural drawings and documentary photos of synagogues taken before the war — as well as models and drawings of his own that he used to create his large-scale constructions.

The works are from his “Polish Village” series produced in the 1970s. He embarked on that project after he was inspired by a 1959 book by Polish architects Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, Wooden Synagogues.

The exhibition also features photographs of the synagogues by Szymon Zajczyk, a Jewish photographer and art historian who was killed in the Holocaust.

Culture destroyed

Poland was once home to Europe’s largest Jewish population, a vibrant community that numbered nearly 3.5 million people before the war. Most were killed in the Holocaust, with many traces of their culture also destroyed.

POLIN Museum director Dariusz Stola said his institution is an appropriate venue for the works because one of its key exhibits is a spectacular, full-scale re-creation of a 17th-century painted synagogue — the kind that inspired Stella’s creations.

The museum held two days of events celebrating the 79-year-old New York-based artist, who traveled to Warsaw for the opening.

This story was originally published February 24, 2016 at 10:53 AM with the headline "Polish museum exhibits U.S. artist Frank Stella’s synagogue-inspired works."