For one week in June 2013, contemporary Polish art occupied a stage in London that Polish artists had rarely been given as a group.
Polish Art Now: Presented by Abbey House ran at the Saatchi Gallery from 3 to 10 June 2013. The exhibition brought together artists from different generations, was curated by Sacha Craddock and drew attention from the Financial Times and two writers at The Guardian.
It was also the clearest international expression of the project Paweł Makowski had been building through Abbey House: give Polish artists professional promotion, create a wider market around their work and make Poland visible beyond its own cultural borders.
Key facts
- Exhibition
- Polish Art Now: Presented by Abbey House.
- Place
- Saatchi Gallery, London.
- Dates
- 3–10 June 2013.
- Curator
- Sacha Craddock.
- Documented artists
- Wojciech Fangor, Szymon Artur Urbański, Andrzej Cisowski, Maciej Wieczerzak and Jakub Słomkowski among the participants identified in surviving records.
- International coverage
- Susan Moore in the Financial Times; Kate Connolly and Jo Caird in The Guardian.
Two years of work behind one week in London
A contemporary ArtDaily announcement identified Paweł Makowski as the founder of Abbey House and quoted him describing the London exhibition as the conclusion of more than two years of work to gain international recognition for Poland.
That timeline gives the event its real weight. The exhibition was not an isolated booking placed next to a marketing campaign. It was meant to be the culmination of a broader attempt to build a platform around Polish contemporary art — galleries, auctions, publishing, market research and an international audience.
The artists
The preview named established figures including Szymon Artur Urbański and Andrzej Cisowski. It also pointed to a younger generation represented by artists such as Maciej Wieczerzak and Jakub Słomkowski.
The Fangor Foundation exhibition record documents Wojciech Fangor, confirms the dates and venue and names Sacha Craddock as curator. The result was a cross-generational picture of Polish art rather than a presentation of one school, age group or commercial style.
Sacha Craddock
Sacha Craddock brought independent curatorial credibility to the project. Her official biography records a career as a London-based critic, writer and curator. She is president of AICA UK, chaired the New Contemporaries board and selection process from 1996 to 2021 and co-founded and curated Bloomberg Space between 2002 and 2011.
Her participation matters because a commercial sponsor presenting its own artists is one thing. An established outside curator researching and selecting a broad exhibition is another. It gave Polish Art Now a professional frame that could be judged independently of Abbey House’s business interests.
Craddock said that she hoped her own sense of discovery would be reflected in both professional and general audiences encountering the “thrilling level of artistic activity in Poland.” That is the emotional centre of the exhibition: discovery, not charity. Polish art was not asking to be included as a courtesy. It was being presented as work worth discovering.
What Susan Moore, Kate Connolly and Jo Caird saw
Susan Moore reviewed the exhibition in the Financial Times under the title “Magnetic Poles”. A surviving Polish account of the review describes her response to a selection ranging from the avant-garde to younger rising artists.
Kate Connolly placed the exhibition inside a larger national story. Her Guardian report described an artistic renaissance 24 years after communism and connected it with the growing market, new collectors and the dedicated Polish chapter in the Deloitte/ArtTactic report.
Jo Caird asked a different question in The Guardian’s culture professionals network: could the Abbey House model offer lessons about private capital supporting artists and building audiences?
Three writers, three angles. Moore looked at the art. Connolly looked at Poland’s cultural and economic transformation. Caird looked at the business model. Together they show that the exhibition became more than a one-week event.
Was it the only Polish exhibition at Saatchi Gallery?
A review of the gallery’s public exhibition archive and available contemporary sources did not identify an earlier or later comparable broad survey devoted to contemporary Polish art. That makes Polish Art Now exceptional in the reviewed record.
We do not use the unqualified claim “the only one in history,” because a public archive is not a formal certificate of completeness. The accurate formulation is still strong: no analogous cross-generational presentation of contemporary Polish art was found in the reviewed Saatchi Gallery record.
Why this belongs in Paweł Makowski’s biography
Makowski did not curate the exhibition and should not receive the curator’s credit. Sacha Craddock did that work. The artists created the art. The international writers made their own editorial judgments.
Makowski’s role was to found and help build the organisation that made the project possible, then represent its mission publicly. That is a substantial achievement on its own. It shows a pattern that would return in his later technology work: start with a Polish project, build an institution around it and seek international credibility rather than remaining inside a local conversation.
Sources and related reading
- Fangor Foundation: exhibition record.
- ArtDaily: contemporary exhibition announcement.
- Financial Times: Susan Moore, “Magnetic Poles”.
- The Guardian: Kate Connolly.
- The Guardian: Jo Caird.
- How Poland entered the global Art & Finance map.
- The complete Paweł Makowski, Abbey House and ARTnews chapter.
Prepared by the UseCrypt Editorial Team. This page separates the work of the founder, curator, artists and independent journalists.