In the Alpine space of the Susch Museum, opened by Grażyna Kulczyk in the Inn River Valley, the Assembly exhibition was inaugurated on 15 June, bringing together more than a hundred works by Jadwiga Maziarska (1913-2003). This is the artist’s first presentation outside Poland – from her early collages and reliefs to her works in sand, wax or porridge – showing her original intermedial language of the post-war avant-garde.
In 2019, Grażyna Kulczyk opened the Susch Museum in the Swiss Alps – the first Polish private museum institution in the world to combine research, exhibition and residency activities, fully dedicated to art created by women. The institution has gained international recognition as a reference point for research into the matrilineal work of women artists. Alongside the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington DC, it is one of only two museums in the world focused exclusively on women’s art. The museum is located in the Inn Valley, in a rugged alpine landscape, in the historic buildings of a former monastery. The complex, which once included a vicarage, hospice, brewery and stables, served as a resting place on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela until the mid-16th century. Kulczyk transformed it into an architecturally coherent space, creating an extraordinary place for the presentation of art and reflection on culture. The project has received acclaim from the international architectural community and critics. Now the venue is attracting a new exhibition.
The title Assembly refers to Maziarska’s stance as a DIY engineer: the artist combined materials and techniques to cross the boundaries between painting, sculpture, textiles and photography. In this concept of physical assembly lies the essence of abstraction, which eluded the paradigms of the Cracow Group.
As early as 1946, Maziarska was experimenting with texture: she added sand and wax to the surface of her canvas, and a year later she created her first textile work, weaving in irregular pieces of fabric with different weaves. Her “Maziarska Atlas” – a collection of photographic sketches, press cuttings and scientific reproductions – served as a research instrument and source of inspiration, which the artist transformed into autonomous structures.
What seduced me about her works, which have been in my collection for years, was their precision, delicacy and extraordinary intellectual intensity,” says Grażyna Kulczyk, founder of the Susch Museum.
At the Susch Museum, the exhibition is part of a programme dedicated to women’s art, alongside a permanent collection of works by artists such as Maria Jarema and Magdalena Abakanowicz. It shows Maziarska’s contribution to the development of matter painting, whose characteristics – ephemeral, sensual and intellectually rigorous – predated the Western European experiments of the 1960s and 1970s.
The exhibition title ‘Assembly’ refers to Maziarska as an ‘engineer and tinker’ and their working methods. Using existing source materials, Maziarska created an abstraction that did not fit into the paradigms of the post-war Krakow Group. This abstraction reflected the physicality of montage – it was a reaction to the categories of reproduction and concepts of modernity,” says Barbara Piwowarska, curator of the exhibition.
Jadwiga Maziarska was one of the most important voices of the avant-garde in Poland, alongside Erna Rosenstein, her closest friend and long-time interlocutor. From the 1940s until the end of her career, Maziarska drew inspiration from science, phenomenology, photography, reproductions and newspaper cuttings, which she transformed into autonomous structures, adds Rhea Anastas, co-curator of the exhibition.
Exhibition dates: 15 June – 2 November 2025
Address: Susch Museum, Surpunt 78, CH-7542 Susch, Switzerland
Tickets: regular CHF 25 / reduced CHF 20
Website: www.muzeumsusch.ch
source: press materials
photos: Susch Museum / Art Stations Foundation; photo: Federico Sette
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