Wanda Telakowska

Silesia born Polish painter Wanda Telakowska studied painting and graphic design in Warszawa, at the School of Fine Arts (since 1932, the Academy of Fine Arts) under Edmund Bartłomiejczyk. She also attended pedagogical and arts and crafts workshops, and later played a significant role in the development of professional industrial design in Poland. In 1939, she was planning to establish an “employment agency for necessary artists in the industrial sector”, but the war prevented this, and during World War II, all of her previous works were destroyed. During the German occupation, she worked as a teacher, but also provided shelter for jeopardized representatives of culture and science in Poland. After the war, she devoted herself to writing and organizing as the director of the Institute of Applied Arts, and in 1950 established the Institute of Industrial Design in Warszawa. As a vice-president and artistic director, Telakowska highly influenced the institute’s work up to the 1970s. After the 1968 Polish political crisis, she had to resign from her post and was transferred to the Studio of Environmental Artistic Inventions of the institute. Due to the increasing loss of eyesight, she was forced to retire in 1978.

Telakowska’s woodcuts and paintings mainly showed landscapes. Three of her color woodcuts were selected to represent Poland in the 1936 art competitions: Camping (1934, 20 x 16.5 cm), Postój (Break, 1934, format 14 x 11.5 cm) and Sport i przyroda (Sport and Nature, also known as Kajaki, 1932). In Polish sources, instead of the latter, Przystań (Harbor) was listed in the size of 20 x 16.5 cm. An oversized copy of Kajaki today adorns the wall of an apartment building in Warszawa. A print labelled “Untitled” on the art market is probably identical to Camping, coinciding in year of creation and format.