Wieslaw Juszczak

For a year, from October 1955 to September 1956, Juszczak worked as an editor at the Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy state publishing house in Warsaw. He also occasionally wrote art essays and reviews for the Kraków-based Życie Literackie, as well as working on his doctorate at a seminar taught by Starzyński. In 1957, Wydawnictwo Arkady published Juszczak’s debut book, an essay on Artur Grottger. In October 1961, he was hired as an assistant at the Polish Academy of Sciences. On 27 June 1962, the day after his 30th birthday, he became a doctor of humanities. The defense of his PhD thesis took place at the same Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw where he studied, and was based on a dissertation on the work of Witold Wojtkiewicz, reviewed by professors Jan Białostocki and Kazimierz Wyka. The supervisor was Juliusz Starzyński. Published in 1965 as Wojtkiewicz and New Art, the essay would mark a breakthrough in the history of Polish modern art.

Consequently, in the autumn of 1962, Juszczak received a scholarship from the British Council and went on a one-year research internship at the Courtauld Institute in London. His tutor there was the famous modern art historian, Anthony Blunt, who suggested that he work on William Blake’s illustrations for the works of John Milton. At that time, Juszczak visited almost all of England and part of Scotland, and in addition to Blake, many of his fascinations were born there, most of which he would go on to develop years later: the so-called Elgin Marbles in the British Museum and the fascination with ancient Greece; British classicism and romanticism; painting by William Turner and the Impressionists; sculpture by Henry Moore (whose studio he had the opportunity to visit); Japanese and Swedish films, watched in a London cinema.

Starting from 1964 he worked at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences as an assistant professor. Having definitively abandoned research on medieval and Renaissance art, he focused on writing about the European 18th century, Romanticism, and the Young Poland movement. He also worked as editor for the Ossolineum and PWN publishing houses, including on the texts of Théophile Thoré selected by Hanna Morawska (1970); he collaborated on the anthology Artists on Art. From van Gogh to Picasso pod redakcją Elżbiety Grabskiej i Hanny Morawskiej (1969), był redaktorem naukowym antologii Elżbiety Grabskiej Moderniści o sztuce (1971).

edited by Elżbieta Grabska and Hanna Morawska (1969), and was the academic editor of Elżbieta Grabska’s anthology Modernists on Art (1971).

He also undertook translations of English-language scholarly literature in the field of art history.

In December 1976, his habilitation colloquium was held before the Scientific Council of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences; as a basis, he submitted (having abandoned the initial project of the thesis on Blake) a dissertation on Polish painting of the modernist period, and consequently obtained the degree of doctor habilitated in humanities in the field of modern art history and theory. The habilitation book, the sum total of his reflections on the art of Young Poland, titled Polish Painting. Modernism Polish Painting. Modernism (1977), emerged as a unique, sensational approach to the era. Juszczak held the position of associate professor at the Academy of Sciences until the end of 1987. On 18 December of that year, he obtained the academic title of associate professor of humanities, and on 1 October 1992, the title of full professor.

In 1985, he was simultaneously employed as an associate professor at the Institute of Art History at the University of Warsaw, taking up a master’s seminar on modern art after the sick Andrzej Jakimowicz. There, he taught monographic lectures (including on ornament in various cultures of the world, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of art, Greek archaic thought on art) and regular master’s seminars, and with time only optional film seminars until 2011, even after his retirement. In addition to masterpieces by Antonioni, Bergman, Visconti, among others, the subject of his analyses were Japanese films, even those completely forgotten. These seminars were popular not only among students (of various majors, by the way), and Juszczak himself often translated dialogue lists for lesser-known films that had never been shown in Poland before. He also continued to work after his retirement in 2002 at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, teaching, among other things, a doctoral seminar. He also lectured on art history at the Catholic University of Lublin. He supervised several dozen doctoral students, both at the Polish Academy of Sciences and at the University of Warsaw.

When the Artistic Olympiad, a competition of knowledge about art for high school students, was born in 1978, Wiesław Juszczak became its juror and sat on the Olympic finals committee for over a quarter of a century.

He worked in Warsaw, and from 1979 also in a secluded cottage in Męćmierz near Kazimierz Dolny on the Vistula River. For years, this rural house became a place of close contact with nature, but also a summer studio for creative practice, where Juszczak produced numerous works.