COURAGE

povezivanje zbirki

Tina Krone came to East-Berlin in 1975 to pursue her studies. In 1982, she began working as a teacher, at the same time becoming engaged with various dissident groups. She was active in “Women for Peace”, a member of a conspiratorial reader circle, and was involved in the production of prohibited print materials and programs for an illegal radio station. Three years later, in 1985, she was barred from teaching. She found new employment via the ‘New Forum’ (Neues Forum) civil rights movement as editor for the Die Andere (‘The Other’) weekly. In 1992, the Robert-Havemann Society decided to open an archive and Krone’s assistance was requested. Today, she is the director of the resulting Archive of Opposition to the GDR, the largest of the so-called ‘rehabilitation archives’. As a research associate of the Robert-Havemann Society, Tina Krone has curated and co-curated multiple exhibitions, and authored numerous publications.

Marian Kropyvnytskyi was born on September 8, 1903 in the village Cherepashyntsi, Kalynivka raion, Vinnytsia oblast. In 1921, he graduated from the 7-class school. During 1922-1923, he continued his studies in Vinnytsia at the school of painting of Stepan Slobodianiuk-Podolian, who also co-organized the National Museum of Fine Arts in Vinnytsia. In 1925, Marian Kropyvnytskyi entered the Kyiv Art Institute, where he studied at the Faculty of Pedagogy under the supervision of Pavlo Holubiatnikov, the pupil of the famous painter Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Upon his graduation in 1929-1930, Kropyvnytskyi worked as an assistant at the Kyiv Art Institute. Between 1928 and 1930 he was the personal assistant of Kazimir Malevich at the Institute. 

In 1930, he organized preparation courses for the workers willing to study at the Institute, and taught them a painting course. At the same time he was an assistant of the artist Kazymyr Malevych, who taught formal-technical disciplines at the Institute. In October 1930, Kropyvnytskyi was fired from the Institute, upon which he joined the All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Painters. In 1931-1941, Marian Kropyvnytskyi had a membership in the Kyiv committee of painters and worked on contracts. In 1932, he joined aspirantura (doctoral programme) at the All-Ukrainian History Museum. In 1936, he participated in the exhibition of works by the Soviet painters of Polish origin in Moscow. He also took part in several small exhibitions of the Kyiv department of the All-Ukrainian Association of Proletarian Artists as well as in the exhibition entitled “The Blossoming Ukraine,” in 1937. In 1942-1943, in the village Iablunivka of Bila Tserkva raion, he made icons for the iconostasis, church banners and many other things. In 1944-1947, he worked as a sailor at the river сraft in Kyiv. He served in the army during the World War II and worked as a civilian afterwards. Marian Kropyvnytskyi did not join the Painters’ Union, created in 1957. In other words, the artist found himself outside the system and became an outcast. Marian Kropyvnytskyi did not belong to any organization, which could testify that he worked at home. Thus, he had no job, no workshop, no salary and no pension. In 1962-1973, he was a member of the photography club, experimenting with photos and slides. He had a dream to exhibit his paintings in Kremenets and Vinnytsia as well as in Poland. As a connoisseur of Polish and Ukrainian culture and history, Kropyvnytskyi  studied the monuments of Ukraine. Together with his daughter, he visited cities and villages as well as castles and fortresses connected with the history of the Polish borderlands. Marian Kropyvnytskyi created an in-home library of Polish literature and fine arts. Kropyvnytskyi painted with oils, though in some of his works he used watercolour, pastel, pencil and charcoal. His works include portraits, still life paintings, and landscapes among other things. Marian Kropyvnytskyi died on August 16, 1989. He was buried at the “Lisove” cemetery in Kyiv.

Jan Krumpholc (3 June 1927 Radíkov - September 2010 Olomouc) was a Czech farmer and dissident. During Wold War II the Krumpholc family helped escaped Russian prisoners and partisans. After February 1948 Jan Krumpholc joined the anticommunist resistance. In spring 1949 he was arrested and sentenced for treason and espionage for 15 years in prison. He served his sentence in uranium mines in Jáchymov and in one of the hardest labour camps, the stone-pit Mořina. After release in 1969 due to an amnesty he changed several jobs. At the end of the 1970s he started to copy and distribute Catholic samizdat. In the basement of his house in Radíkov he had a manual duplicating machine. At that time, the Vicar-General in the Olomouc Archdiecese was Dr Antonín Veselý, a well-known „patriotic priest“ who collaborated with the communist regime. At the beginning of the 1980s Krumpholc was sentenced to 3 years prison for these activities, but for health reasons, he did not have to serve his sentence. Audio recordings of Krumpholc’s recollections have been preserved by the association Stopy paměti in Olomouc (stopypameti.cz/jan-krumpholc).

Witold Krymarys (born 1948) is an intermedial and analytical photography artist, a filmmaker and a creator of video art. In the 1980s he participated in the Pitch-In Culture. Apart from artistic activities Krymarys creates commercial and applied photography.

Krymarys graduated from the Electric Department at the Łódź University of Technology. In 1972 he joined the Łódź Society of Photography, and two years later the Association of Polish Art Photographers. Since 1974 he has been practising and conceptualising blurred photography (fotografia poruszona), focusing on emotions and experience related to time-space. Similarly as other representatives of the photomedialist art of the 1970s, such as Antoni Mikołajczyk and Ryszard Waśko, Krymarys was interested in movement analysis and ontology of photographic image. At the same time Krymarys did not restrained from addressing social issues. To capture the dynamism of events he would use photography and video simultaneously and often attach ironic commentaries to his works, as in the case of his exhibition titled Photomotions (Fotomocje) in 1985.

Sense of humour and interest in intermediality and motion in photography drew Krymarys towards Łódź Kaliska and the Pitch-In Culture. The photographer took part in the plein-air sessions in Teofilów and the meetings at The Attic. In 1986, together with Józef Rybakowski, he shot a film titled Machines Trembling, Chimneys Smoking... (Maszyny drżące, kominy dymiące...) the Pitch-In Culture’s dramatic farewell gesture for The Attic. A year earlier, also within the Pitch-In Culture, Krymarys made the A Dance by Ewa B. (Taniec Ewy B.): a film consisting of deliberately blurry images, picturing a spontaneous dance on top a table during a party. The artist used both photo and video cameras to critically explore media coverage, as in 1987 The Race (Wyścig): a simultaneous observation a bicycle race on television and through the window.

Krymarys remains faithful to blurred photography, often juxtaposing static architecture and statues with the dynamics of human gestures and urban traffic. Since 1982 he has been running his own photography studio in Łódź.

Sources:

Krzysztof Jurecki, „Koncepcja zdjęć poruszonych według Witolda Krymarysa”, in: „Witold Krymarys. Fotografia poruszona 1974-2016”, Anna Araszkiewicz (red.), Łódź 2016.

Piotr Krajewski i Violetta Kutlubasis-Krajewska (red.), „Ukryta dekada. Polska sztuka wideo 1985-1995”, Wrocław 2010.

Monika Krzencessa-Ropiak has a background in French studies and history. She graduated from University of Gdansk (Faculty of Philology and History) and later from Faculty of Humanities in Nantes, France. As a historian she worked in France between 1999-2000 – she participated in a Cercles Europe project at the Loire – Atlantique region. The project’s goal was to present culture and history of European countries to French high-school students. After she had got back to Poland, in 2001 she became professionally involved in the Institute of National Remembrance in Gdansk, where she worked in the Department of Documents’ Sharing and Archiving.

Her career flourished in 2009 when she joined the European Solidarity Centre as the Head of the Archive and Exhibition Department at the European Solidarity Centre (ECS) in Gdansk. She has been involved in the institution's organisation since its beginning and has played a very important part in shaping its archival resources. She has been overseeing the process of acquisition, organization and archiving of the items collected by the European Solidarity Centre, mainly material heritage objects and photographs.

Her engagement in presenting the history of democratic opposition is commonly appreciated by artists and activists from socialist times. She gets frequently invited to join local art competition juries or to discuss the history of Gdansk’s dissidence in the media. She is able to talk for hours about the precious collection of ECS.