Foksal Gallery Foundation

The Foksal Gallery or Galeria Foksal is a small non-commercial art gallery in Warsaw, Poland established in 1966, that shows works by contemporary avant-garde artists.

The Foksal Gallery was founded in 1966 by a group of Polish art critics and artists, which included one of the founder members of the Polish Constructivist Group of the 1920s. From the outset the gallery's activities were underpinned by the strong philosophical basis embodied within the essay "Wprowadzenie do ogolnej Teorii Miejsca (Introduction to the general Theory of Place)" (1966). The critics associated with the Foksal Gallery; Anka Ptaszkowska, Mariusz Tchorek, Wiesław Borowski established the gallery as a "place, a sudden gap in the utilitarian way of world comprehension", in which art could exist without reference to context or history, a place exempt from outside rules or influence. They also proposed that the venue, "as the most authentic theme of the event", was now to become the actual subject. In addition to the aforementioned critics, the artist-founders at the Foksal included Tadeusz Kantor, Roman Owidzkiego, Edward Krasinski (whose signature blue Scotch tape intervention still winds its way through the gallery's ancillary spaces),Zbigniew Gostomski and Henryk Stażewski.

Zbigniew Gostomski (b. 1932), a founder artist of the Foksal Gallery, held the inaugural exhibition on 1 April 1966 showing works of his Optical Objects series.Tadeusz Kantor and Wlodzimierz Borowski were involved in actions at the gallery during the 60's. The Foksal succeeded in showing work of an avant-garde nature throughout the communist era, apart from a short period of martial law, during which it was 'closed for renovation'. For its first twenty years the Foksal Gallery functioned within the state controlled system, nonetheless succeeding in developing an internationally significant programme of contemporary art under the Directorship of Wieslaw Borowski in co-operation with Andrzej Turowski. Milada Ślizińska also curated a series of exhibitions. Jaromir Jedlinski (previously of the Museum Sztuki in Łódź), was the gallery's Director from July 2006 until August 2008. Nowadays the gallery is run by the younger generation of curators: Katarzyna Krysiak (Artistic Director/Head Curator), Lech Stangret and Monika Weychert Waluszko.

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