The Sylwestrowicz and Oppenheim Collection of Modern Polish Art
The incredible works of Polish Modern Art illustrated here were collected by Dr. Witold and Hanna Dowoyna Sylwestrowicz and first displayed in their extraordinary modern house in suburban Bernardsville, New Jersey. The house was designed by Hanna' brother, late Professor Bohdan Urbanowicz of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1961. Interestingly, he chose to transmit house sketches on ordinary postcards in order to avoid suspicions of the Polish secret police controlling all mail to the U.S. The sketches were then converted to working drawings by a local architect. When completed, the house received a significant recognition in US architectural circles. For many years it served as an informal cultural embassy of Poland, drawing writers, artists, intellectuals, and academics for frequent weekend retreats. Over the next 25 years Witold and Hanna collected the best the enslaved nation of Poland could offer: art. With a great deal of perseverance and knowledge they selected approximately 50 major large pieces and numerous smaller works representing a wonderful cross section of top Polish visual artists of the time, mostly paintings, some tapestry and occasionally a sculpture. This period of the radically contemporary colorful art is a monument to the spirit of independence from the stifling communist grayness.
The Sylwestrowicz collection is among the largest private collections of the Modern Polish Art of the period 1960-1987 in the United States. Selected pieces were exhibited in tens of major art venues, including the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art in NY, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Beyond Geometry in 2004, Miami Museum of Art. Almost the entire collection was shown at LMU|LA Laband Gallery Escapes: Polish Art in the Communist Era, 2010, Robert V. Fullert Art Museum at UCSB Polish Art 1955-1985, and at 15 smaller exhibitions on the East Coast of the United States. Articles about the collection and the modern house appeared in Progressive Architecture (May 1964), Dom i Wnetrze (No.5, 1992), O'key America (Sept. 1991), and Bernardsville News. The collection includes five paintings by renowned Wojciech Fangor, who had a solo exhibition at Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1971.
The collection is as unusual as the biographies of the collectors, a Polish couple who arrived in the United States in 1952. Born in Poland, Witold Dowoyna Sylwestrowicz (1922-1983) graduated from the Warsaw Technical University in Aeronautics, and later obtained his PhD in Materials Science in 1966. He escaped from Nazi occupation to join the Polish Air Force divisions of the Royal Air Force in England. During the WWII, he took heroic part in the Battle of Britain flying three tours as a navigator in a two-seater fighter aircraft of the "Night Fighters" as the Polish Division 307 in the Royal Air Force was known. His incredible years of the war and the separation from Hanna were described in his own book Listy Niewysłane (Unsent Letters) published by the Institute Litteraire in Paris (Kultura paryska), 1988; as well as in the book Lwowskie Puchacze, Wspomnienia Lotnika (Lwów Owls, Memoirs of an Airman), Znak, 1990, authored by Jerzy Damsz, the pilot of the airplanes they both flew as a pilot-navigator pair, and Witold's best friend. Witold died in his home in Bernardsville in 1987. The collection stopped growing at that time.
Hanna, nee Urbanowicz, (1923-2005) was born in Warsaw and graduated from the Warsaw Agricultural Academy. She survived WWII in Warsaw. Her father was murdered by Nazis in the first mass murder of the Polish intelligentsia in 1939 in the infamous Palmiry forest near Warsaw. She lived though the hell of Nazi occupation and survived the Warsaw Rising with her mother and sister. As soon as the war was over, she started heroic attempts to escape from the Stalin-occupied Poland to join her husband Witold in England, who could not return because the communist government in Poland regarded his service in the Royal Air Force as treason. Six times Hanna tried to escape in vain, each time risking her life, in dramatic attempts worthy of a thriller. At one time she was able to join Witold onboard a British ship docked in Szczecin with Witold pretending to be a British Merchant Marine officer, when she received an order to immediately disembark or be arrested by the Secret Police. The seventh attempt was successful, when she was smuggled under coal on a truck. She joined Witold in England in 1947. Her memoirs await publication.
Witold and Hanna immigrated to the US in 1952. Until retirement Witold worked as a scientist at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, and Hanna as Head Statistician at Ciba Pharmaceuticals in Summit, NJ. In 1993, Hanna's old age forced her to sell the beloved house and join the family of her sister, Dr. Danuta and Witold Oppenheim in Santa Monica, California.
Except for a few smaller art pieces distributed to various family members, Hanna bequeathed most pieces to her nephew Dr. Bohdan W. Oppenheim, Professor of Mechanical and Systems Engineering at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Together with a few works collected by Bohdan, they are now displayed in his modern house in Santa Monica. The art continues to receive interest from major art venues, as stated above. The collection can be seen by contacting Dr. Bohdan W. Oppenheim: [email protected], or 310-450-5713.
The Sylwestrowicz collection is among the largest private collections of the Modern Polish Art of the period 1960-1987 in the United States. Selected pieces were exhibited in tens of major art venues, including the Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art in NY, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Beyond Geometry in 2004, Miami Museum of Art. Almost the entire collection was shown at LMU|LA Laband Gallery Escapes: Polish Art in the Communist Era, 2010, Robert V. Fullert Art Museum at UCSB Polish Art 1955-1985, and at 15 smaller exhibitions on the East Coast of the United States. Articles about the collection and the modern house appeared in Progressive Architecture (May 1964), Dom i Wnetrze (No.5, 1992), O'key America (Sept. 1991), and Bernardsville News. The collection includes five paintings by renowned Wojciech Fangor, who had a solo exhibition at Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1971.
The collection is as unusual as the biographies of the collectors, a Polish couple who arrived in the United States in 1952. Born in Poland, Witold Dowoyna Sylwestrowicz (1922-1983) graduated from the Warsaw Technical University in Aeronautics, and later obtained his PhD in Materials Science in 1966. He escaped from Nazi occupation to join the Polish Air Force divisions of the Royal Air Force in England. During the WWII, he took heroic part in the Battle of Britain flying three tours as a navigator in a two-seater fighter aircraft of the "Night Fighters" as the Polish Division 307 in the Royal Air Force was known. His incredible years of the war and the separation from Hanna were described in his own book Listy Niewysłane (Unsent Letters) published by the Institute Litteraire in Paris (Kultura paryska), 1988; as well as in the book Lwowskie Puchacze, Wspomnienia Lotnika (Lwów Owls, Memoirs of an Airman), Znak, 1990, authored by Jerzy Damsz, the pilot of the airplanes they both flew as a pilot-navigator pair, and Witold's best friend. Witold died in his home in Bernardsville in 1987. The collection stopped growing at that time.
Hanna, nee Urbanowicz, (1923-2005) was born in Warsaw and graduated from the Warsaw Agricultural Academy. She survived WWII in Warsaw. Her father was murdered by Nazis in the first mass murder of the Polish intelligentsia in 1939 in the infamous Palmiry forest near Warsaw. She lived though the hell of Nazi occupation and survived the Warsaw Rising with her mother and sister. As soon as the war was over, she started heroic attempts to escape from the Stalin-occupied Poland to join her husband Witold in England, who could not return because the communist government in Poland regarded his service in the Royal Air Force as treason. Six times Hanna tried to escape in vain, each time risking her life, in dramatic attempts worthy of a thriller. At one time she was able to join Witold onboard a British ship docked in Szczecin with Witold pretending to be a British Merchant Marine officer, when she received an order to immediately disembark or be arrested by the Secret Police. The seventh attempt was successful, when she was smuggled under coal on a truck. She joined Witold in England in 1947. Her memoirs await publication.
Witold and Hanna immigrated to the US in 1952. Until retirement Witold worked as a scientist at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, and Hanna as Head Statistician at Ciba Pharmaceuticals in Summit, NJ. In 1993, Hanna's old age forced her to sell the beloved house and join the family of her sister, Dr. Danuta and Witold Oppenheim in Santa Monica, California.
Except for a few smaller art pieces distributed to various family members, Hanna bequeathed most pieces to her nephew Dr. Bohdan W. Oppenheim, Professor of Mechanical and Systems Engineering at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Together with a few works collected by Bohdan, they are now displayed in his modern house in Santa Monica. The art continues to receive interest from major art venues, as stated above. The collection can be seen by contacting Dr. Bohdan W. Oppenheim: [email protected], or 310-450-5713.
