The history of the National Museum in Poznań‘s collection begins in 1857. The Museum of Polish and Slavic Antiquities was formed at that time. The shape of the collection was largely determined by the gift of Seweryn Mielżyński. In 1870, he donated close to 300 paintings created between the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as a large collection of prints and drawings. Thanks to Mielżyński, the museum became a museum of art. After 50 years, the most valuable canvases were deposited in the collections of the Wielkopolska Museum. After the Second World War, they were incorporated into the collection of the National Museum. Today they form the core of the exhibition dedicated to the art of the Enlightenment and Classicism. The second, equally important collection forming the museum collection are the works from the Raczyński Foundation at the National Museum in Poznań. The main part of them comes from Edward Alexander Raczyński‘s Rogalińska Gallery. This set of several hundred works was created at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in Rogalin near Poznań. Until 1939, it was exhibited in the palace gallery. After the war, it was in the Poznań Museum. From its resources, more than 40 paintings by Jacek Malczewski come, with such masterpieces as Melancholy and the Vicious Circle. The museum in Poznań also owes this collection to many valuable works of Young Poland‘s art.
Throughout its long history, the collection was enriched by gifts from private individuals, institutions, and the artists themselves. After World War II, purchases were also possible, which increased the collections with works by colorists, especially the paintings of Tytus Czyżewski, Artur Nacht–Samborski, Wacław Taranczewski and Zygmunt Waliszewski. In the 1960s, works by avant–garde creators and creators were acquired: Maria Nicz–Borowiakowa, Maria Ewa Łukiewicz–Rogoyska, and then painters from the circle of the École de Paris – Gustaw Gwozdecki, Tadeusz Makowski, Eugeniusz Zaka and Roman Kramsztyk.
The gallery exhibition respects the principle of chronology and historical continuity from the Enlightenment and Classicism, through the Romantic and Historicist movement and the Realist painting of the last decades of the 19th century along with Impressionism, to the multi–faceted art of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, with images and sculptures of Polish symbolism and early Expressionism, to the avant–garde movement. The exhibition also uses problem–related or stylistic affinity of works. Complementing the chronological narrative are special monographic presentations of selected masters. The composition of paintings within the gallery space allows one to see correspondences between individual works, based on formal procedures, content similarities, or stylistic searches. It offers different points of view, each of which brings out special interpretative ideas.
The old building‘s side opens the gallery of the times of Stanisław August. It is a witness to the greatness of his patronage, setting up works of outstanding creators of this time such as Marcello Bacciarelli, Josef Grassi, Giovanni Battista Lampi and Franciszek Smuglewicz. In the next spaces of the exhibition stands out, the most interesting in Polish museums, the collection of paintings by Aleksander Orłowski, as well as the group of works by Piotr Michałowski. The presentation of the realistic trend includes works of such masters of the direction as Maksymilian Gierymski and Józef Szermentowski, as well as canonical compositions of Józef Chełmoński, including his Orka. Next to it, paintings of Polish impressionists are exposed. It consists of textbook examples of the trend, such as Władysław Podkowiński‘s Mokra Wieś and Józef Pankiewicz‘s Flower Market. In the next space, forming the heart of the exhibition, a monographic exhibition of forty paintings by Jacek Malczewski was distinguished, which is a kind of identifying sign of the Poznań Museum. Art of Young Poland, closing this sequence, are works created in two then prevailing environments – Krakow and Warsaw. The richness of the Poznań collection allowed for a compilation of small monographs of the most outstanding creators: Olga Boznańska, Józef Mehoffer, Władysław Ślewiński, Witold Wojtkiewicz, Wojciech Weiss and Stanisław Wyspiański.
We are showcasing 20th century art on the ground floor of the new wing. The gallery, covering the period between the wars and the Colorists, has taken up three intersecting spaces. Here, particular emphasis was placed on the artists involved in building modernity, starting with the Krakow–based Formists and the Poznań Rebellion, all the way to the radical, Warsaw–Łódź Constructivists. In their immediate vicinity, works of their ideological antagonists, affirming the tradition of painting classicism, were placed. A separate place was taken by the Capists, focused on colour, co–creating such a lively trend up until the 1960s, as well as the painters of heightened expression, painting in Paris, which, alongside Krakow and Warsaw, was the largest concentration of Polish artists at the time.
