After a period of decline, the last decades of the century. XVII saw a notable revival of the arts. The Palladian style was established in architecture, whose main representative was T. de Gameren (Krasiński palace in Warsaw, Sant’Anna in Krakow). The first half of the eighteenth century experienced a strong influence of German culture, thanks to the architects of the Saxon kings August II and III (Pöppelmann, G. Chiaveri, etc.). The influence of the French Rococo was also decisive, sensitive both in sculpture (stucco decoration of various palaces) and in painting and minor arts. With the reign of Stanislaus II Augustus (1764-95) the neoclassical taste began in Poland, of French import. Warsaw was above all the liveliest center of the new style. The major architectural achievements were the reconstruction of the castle (by V. Louis and JL Prieur) and the church of Divine Providence, by J. Kubicki (1791). There are also numerous bourgeois palaces that took up the national theme of the peristyle as a columned portico (in Warsaw, Lazienski and Belvedere palaces). In the field of sculpture, the Polish stay (1820) of B. Thorvaldsen was decisive, who spread the ways of neoclassicism, destined to have a large following in the country until the mid-nineteenth century. On the other hand, the presence in Warsaw, in the period of Stanislao Augusto, of the landscape painter B. Bellotto was important for painting., while at court the personality of M. Bacciarelli dominated. Towards the middle of the century. XIX in architecture the eclectic forms of the historical styles were fully established, with a particular tendency for the neo-Gothic. In painting, after the neoclassical currents like David (A. Brodowski), national and patriotic characters were accentuated. The greatest romantic painter, stylistically linked to contemporary French painting, is considered Piotr Michalowski, however in history painting Jan Matejko emerged in Krakow, while the realistic current in landscape and genre painting was represented in Warsaw by J. Szermentowski, A. Gierymski etc. In the field of sculpture the patriotic current established itself with W. Oleszczynski, even if the greatest personality of the century was X. Dunikowski. At the end of the nineteenth century in Krakow, the largest artistic center in the country, the Sztuka group was formed (1897), engaged in the reaction to realistic-academic painting, while symbolist tendencies represented by the poet and painter Stanislaw Wyspianski emerged. According to beautypically, with the conquest of independence (1918) in Poland there was a prodigious artistic revival and a vast opening to all modern European currents. The functional architecture it appeared around 1920 especially in Warsaw (Czajkowski, Lagowski etc.). In sculpture, the adhesions to cubism (A. Zamoyski), abstractionism (H. Wicinski) and the tradition of popular wooden sculpture connected with cubist experiences (J. Szczepkowski) are interesting. The Formismo group (Krakow 1917-22), of cubist and expressionist inspiration, reacted in painting to the Viennese Secession; this group was followed by other avant – garde ones such as the Rythm, which flourished between 1922 and 1932 and preferred popular themes, the Blok, with abstractist tendencies, which arose in 1924 and so on. In the years after the Second World War, official art appears to be dominated by the trends of socialist realism (F. Kowarski). However, around the 1950s, abstractionism found in Poland – certainly the most fervent and avant-garde within the socialist countries – numerous followers (T. Kantor, J. Lebenstejn etc.) also in the field of sculpture (Alina Szapocznikow). In the context of contemporary Polish art, the importance of graphic arts, especially woodcut, should also be remembered, which in 1930 reached the high level maintained by W. Skoczylas at H. Chrostowska, as well as the art of the poster (T. Trepkowski, J. Lenica). Despite the constraints imposed by the needs of post-war reconstruction and economic difficulties, artistic life has continued its prestigious tradition, both in the architectural and in the visual arts. Among the most significant symbols of the country’s history is the memorial monument in the Auschwitz concentration camp: following the international competition announced in 1957, the work, dry and anti-rhetorical, with a strong evocative charge, was created in ten years by a team Italo-Polish composed by G. Simoncini, J. Palka, T. Valle and M. Vitale for architecture, by P. Cascella and J. Jarnuszkiewicz for sculpture. Young talents such as R. Bujnowski, A. Bogacka and M. Maciejowski have recently received international recognition, artists capable of reinterpreting painting as a valid language of articulation and penetration of the contemporary. 1989, a turning point and a year of radical political and economic changes, opened up new perspectives and opportunities for Polish architecture. But rather than inaugurating an innovative artistic season, political pluralism has paved the way for a happily inhomogeneous artistic pluralism in which the evolution of architecture is recognizable on a geographical rather than a stylistic level. Apart from cosmopolitan Warsaw, the center of influence for the whole country, places of interesting development are Krakow, Upper Silesia and Wroclaw. The capital, after the post-war reconstruction, it experiences a phase of rapid development in which the reception of the main lines of European design tries to combine with a local interpretation (S. Kurylowicz, T. Spychala). While current trends in Krakow represent a return to the roots of the modernist tradition (R. Loegler, W. Obulowicz), in Upper Silesia, the largest industrial agglomeration in the country, contemporary architecture draws on regional traditions and, in the wake of a local variant of deconstructionism, it makes extensive use of popular building materials such as red brick and steel (A. Duda, H. Zubel, M. Pilinkiewicz, T. Studniarek). The source of inspiration for the architecture in Wroclaw is instead not so much the illustrious modernist past of the city as the distant echo of postmodernism.
