“Rationed Modernity. Modernism in the Polish People’s Republic” (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) exhibition focuses on the determinants and limitations of modernisation processes in Poland after World War II. They were both economic and organisational in nature, as well as politically related to the functioning of undemocratic authorities that imposed ideological restrictions on culture.

The exhibition firstly highlights the tension between modernist visual languages and the war experience; secondly, the effects resulting from ideological pressure on the modernist imperative of the social function of art; and thirdly, the phantom nature of the modernisation of the Polish People’s Republic and its dependence on adopted modernisation patterns contrasted with the deformations of modernist projects characterising everyday life in the times of the PRL.

All this makes the ‘Rationed Modernity’ exhibition – the third show in the 4 x modernity series – not so much an attempt at an encyclopaedic presentation of the artistic achievements of a given period, but a statement on the shape and fate of the next stage of modernism in Poland after the interwar period.

The exhibition is available in the Main Building of the National Museum in Cracow from 17.11 2023 to 14.04.2024

More information: https://mnk.pl/wystawy/nowoczesnosc-reglamentowana-modernizm-w-prl