The ThreadsShortly after the Second World War, the idea of humanising modernist architecture with art textiles was propagated by Le Corbusier. The large, empty, ascetic surfaces of the walls of modern buildings, devoid of mouldings and other ornamental forms, demanded “warming”. The tapestries, often monumental, created a semblance of intimacy. They evoked associations with warmth and cosiness, and also played an important acoustic role by absorbing sound in concrete buildings. And although the idea seemed trivial to the young Oskar Hansen, it found fertile ground in many European countries.  In Poland, a renaissance of interest in artistic textiles occurred in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. In 1968, the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts established the Studio of Experimental Textiles, headed by Wojciech Sadley. The exhibition at Kordegarda. The Gallery of the National Centre for Culture presents the achievements of Wojciech Sadley and four artists from the first graduating class of his studio: Bogusława Jaroszewicz-Fogler, Zygmunt Łukasiewicz, Małgorzata Martynowicz Laird and Anna Michniewicz. The presentation, which confronts the creative achievements of various artistic individualities, is particularly interesting in view of the outstanding teaching achievements of the studio’s head, Wojciech Sadley. It is rare for artists who come from the same studio, who have been in close contact for years, who work and exhibit together, to have such a different and individualised creative language. Wojciech Sadley is indisputably one of the titans of Polish artistic textiles. He is a classic of the avant-garde who revolutionised the very idea of textile, broadening and deepening its definition, while making his mark in European textile art of the 1960s and contributing to its total emancipation in the following decade. [1] This artist took a separate path and experimented. Although he used a weaving workshop, he did not treat it rigorously. His work escapes simple classification. His “textile that has ceased to be textile” enters the borderlands of sculpture. [2] Sadley was, incidentally, the originator of the term “custom technique”. [3] He followed an individual vision, creating object-installations. He was interested in fibre-related raw materials. They were wire, leather, fur, wood and even paper. He juxtaposed textures and materials – soft with stiff, warm with cool. To use Danuta Wróblewska’s term – he was a biologist. He constructed his own imagery inspired by nature, tissues, macroimages of the natural world, subject to the invariable laws of growth and symmetry. His completely separate quasi-organisms cause amazement and consternation. He created visual phenomena bordering on theatrical props and magic. In doing so, he revealed the ability, characteristic of great artists, to resurrect the state of childhood. The Kordegarda exhibition gathers Sadley’s works that deviate from the traditional definition of textile art, including the series Stings, described by Wiesława Wierzchowska as a spatial collage,4 which is a synthesis of the observation of nature and at the same time its farreaching transformation. Leather hulls and cocoons woven from woollen yarn, resembling living creatures, hide the blades of the nose-horns – scythes. In one work, the artist used a relief-covered 19th-century Canadian walrus fang; in other miniature works, he used boar tusks. Stings create a sense of threat. We have the impression that some primordial bloody spectacle or sacrificial ritual is about to unfold before our eyes. The theme of this art is death, or rather the border states between life and death, the constant neighbourhood of existence and annihilation. These almost biological creations come to life in our imagination, resurrected from graveyards of redundant and forgotten objects, from monstrous entomological showcases.  Next is the 1974 Figures – a collection of overscaled scarabs, stuffed gold cushions with an overabundance of feelers and limbs made of strings. Burnt holes in their shiny armours evoke the thought of transience – vanitas vanitatum. The exhibition also features previously unexhibited paintings by Sadley from 1962. It is a painting of matter. The dark, impasto paintings on thick, solid boards make it clear that throughout his artistic journey, Sadley remained first and foremost a painter. The organic textures made of layers of plaster, sand, cement and glue, shimmer like mica. They resemble rocks or charred creations of nature. Their rough texture will be transferred to the tapestries. The colour range here is limited, predominantly brown. In places, strands of vivid colour – reds and yellows – shine through like light through a veil of gloom. Sometimes, the artist cuts out planes in the board onto which he applies colour. Although the works are abstract, the eye accustomed to looking for mimetic forms will notice silhouettes emanating a mysterious radiance, reminiscent of iconic figures of saints.[1] N. Zawisza, Wojciech Sadley. Człowiek, twórca, legenda, [in:] Wojciech Sadley. Wystawa twórczości, catalogue of four retrospective exhibitions, Warsaw-Łódź 1995, p. 7, in: J. Barszcz, J. M. Zawadzki, Wojciech Sadley. Tkanina życia, Warsaw 2019, p. 262.[2] Sztuka i przyjaciele, Pisma wybrane Danuty Wróblewskiej, ed. K. Zycho-wicz, Warsaw 2022, pp. 295, 302.[3] N. Zawisza, op. cit.[4] W. Wierzchowska, Problem tożsamości, “Design” 1992, no. 9, p. 63.Author: Katarzyna HaberAdmission is freeExhibition opening: April 11 at 18:00Exhibition duration: April 11 – May 19Curator of the exhibition: Katarzyna HaberOrganizers: National Center for Culture, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage