Janina Musiałczyk – W drodze, on the road
Mediathek Sorted
Voices of people who have accompanied the artist on her journey:
The search for the perfect composition
Janina Musiałczyk, or INKA to us. 20 years ago, I received the small artist’s book from Inka, “Drawings and Texts” (Zeichnungen und Texte), with reduced, almost dry, short texts about her journey from Poland to Hamburg. When I read them, I cried, I just cried. I couldn’t control myself. With her minimalistic techniques, Inka has succeeded in tackling a serious issue, MIGRATION, on a very profound level. I have read this small book again several times, and again, I have cried.
Of course, there are beautiful, balanced, colourful areas in Inka’s paintings. You can feel an incredible consistency and stubbornness in her search for the perfect composition. Yes, as a painter, I am always rather jealous of the way Inka works with colours. With Inka, you can feel a great love of colour and great respect for painting, and at the same time, a modesty in her relationship with art. Perhaps she learned this from her professor in Łódź, Stanisław Fijałkowski.
Wiesław Smętek, illustrator, painter, drawer and friend of Janina Musiałczyk. Seevetal, 2023
Art teacher in Łódź
I was eight years old when my father took me to an art class given by an unusual woman, who every week for the next ten particularly formative years would exert an incredible influence over me. For forty more years, we continued to meet, both in letters and in a more fleeting exchange of ideas.
Piotr eL. Częstochowa, 2023
Art teacher and wonderful human being
Inka Musiałczyk is one of the most important people in my life, to whom I have much to be grateful for. I already inherited an interest in and affinity towards art from my parents in Poland. At an age which shaped me as a person and which presented me with decisions about my further course in life, namely as a 16- or 17-year-old, I ended up in the art class run by Inka Musiałczyk. There, I was lucky to get to know not only the outstanding artist, but also a wonderful person. After a break lasting several years, which was interrupted only by the occasional letter, I was able to meet Inka again in Germany, where I have lived for years and where I work as a paper restorer. The relationship between teacher and pupil became a close friendship. Inka not only enriches my life with her art, which I value highly, but she is always ready to listen and, when necessary, gives good advice.
Krzysztof Nast M.A., restorer. Kleve, 2023
“For us, she embodied the world of art”
The Palace of Youth (Pałac Młodzieży) in Łódź, housed in a beautiful modernist building in the centre of the city, contained a large number of creative workspaces, including an atelier for the fine arts, run by Janina Musiałczyk.
It was a place of artistic initiation and inspiration, as well as a place to meet other people of my own age with similar sensibilities. Some of us remained friends for life.
Our initiation into art included drawings, simple graphic techniques such as monotype, and, only later, painting from watercolour through to the long-desired challenge: oil colours and painting at an easel on a canvas. Sensual, secretive names of colours on the palette: ultramarine, Paris blue, Egyptian blue, ochre, umbra, satin ochre, Veronese green ... Concepts and basic knowledge of image composition, expressing ideas through symbols, and graphic drawing for posters, realism of visualisation and abstract thinking. Study trips, discussions about art, a feeling of belonging to an extraordinary place. These attempts took place under the custody of Janina Musiałczyk, Inka. Beautiful, friendly, clever, stylish like a whisper of artistic perfection. We worshipped her. For us, she embodied the world of art towards which we strove. It was she who had created the atmosphere in this powerful, influential workshop. Above all, she was an inspired teacher. Later, she gave us, a group of her students, her friendship.
I only really became acquainted with Janina Musiałczyk’s work later on, and it surprised me. There was no superficial aesthetic, although in her paintings, there are beautiful, subtle compositions rendered in carefully selected colours.
It is existential art, candid, intimate, at times almost painful. The record of a journey on foot, indeed of the wandering to and fro with no clear sense of direction, the lack of rootedness, as reflected by the titles of her works – such as “Coming, Becoming, Going” (Kommen, werden, gehen). The motif of the house borne on one’s back or on wheels, one’s entire world packed into a suitcase, on a cart, in a bundle, the cipher of the house, which needs to be furnished again and again, on the road, in “rented rooms”, in the search for a new mooring.
Drawings that express the imbroglios with the other, for better or for worse, in love and conflict, entanglements, the head carried on the back like a hump of sorrow, meetings and separations along the road. Emotions captured in brief dramas, like short theatre scenes.
I especially like the drawn (self-)portraits, where a second face appears on the ribcage or on the stomach, like an inner child furtively observing the world outside, or an inner observer that has been awakened.
For this existential, secular meditation, Janina Musiałczyk has found a raw, simplified form that sharpens one’s observation, and allows what is observed to come more sharply to the fore. The courage to be candid, the courage to show the inner, internal world in all its existential struggle, is what makes this art so extraordinarily valuable. She is a mirror that reflects back the universal fate that we all share.
Małgorzata Misiowiec, graphic designer. Łódź, 2023
As a teacher and mentor in Hamburg
Meeting with fate: My approach to painting, drawing and composition was expanded in the deepest sense by Janina Musiałczyk, and even today is still accompanied by her own empathetic capability.
Rosemarie Burmeister, student adviser, writer and painter. Hamburg, 2023
“Trust in our capabilities”
Our teacher Janina: giving us tasks that gave us the greatest possible freedom as to how we completed them; individual, empathetic instruction and support, borne by the sincere, passionate desire that we find our way to our own expression and style; an infectious trust in our ability. I have learned a great deal from Janina the person and the artist, and also about myself, and I will always be grateful to her.
Remda Saborowski, student of drawing, painting and composition at the art school run by Janina Musiałczyk 1990–2008. Wedel near Hamburg, 2023
A bridge to art
Janina Musiałczyk is one of my most important teachers. She built a bridge for me to art, which had been lacking in my study of visual communication. As a teacher, she was always inspiring and very precise in her observations. I still hear her voice when I am working. Also her “just keep going” when things weren't working out so well. She was always generous with her knowledge and contacts, and gave us insights into her work and life. Her view of the world expanded my own, and without doubt, her style, especially in drawing, was a big influence on me.
Silke Storjohann, freelance photographer. Hamburg, 2023
“Years spent together”
I was never a student of Janina Musiałczyk’s. And yet our many years together, through friendship and our artistic work, have influenced and instructed me. Her profound works have always touched me so deeply that I am lost for words when I stand in front of the tender, yet so strong strokes in her graphic images. She is and always was consistent and positively strict, and she loved her homeland. The themes of a “person filled with feeling”, so heartfelt, so profound, sometimes achingly sad, and yet so human ... simply wonderful! We are cousins; her mother and my father were siblings. We didn’t become close until adulthood, yet we gained our sense of connection through art, through her art.
Agata Schubert-Hauck, artist. Berlin, 2023
Memories of Janina Musiałczyk from Paris
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man,
then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you,
for Paris is a moveable feast.[83]
If you were lucky enough to have met Inka as a young person,
then wherever you go for the rest of your life, she will stay with you,
like a moveable feast.
In the magical, winding lanes of the moveable feast, anything is possible. In magical places, the past sometimes turns into this afternoon. And although fleetingly, it has its form, its shape and its size. These are bounded by time and place. Yet memories have their power, their colour tone, their rhythm of appearing and suddenly disappearing. While I was looking out at the Place de la Contrescarpe from the restaurant Le Volcan in Paris, I observed the shadow of Ernest Hemingway’s steps moving towards his apartment.[84] You could hear his conversation with Gertrude Stein borne on the wind. Another whisper, a small, quiet voice on the breeze, this time from the Santiago du Chili park[85].
I heard, barely audible: Please draw me a sheep.[86]
Suddenly, I heard the following words, somewhat louder: Please record memories.
I stood up. Looked around. Tried to make out where the request came from. Pedestrians walked hurriedly or slowly, sometimes lost in thought, past the tables, which at this hour were still empty.
Mindful of Herbert’s advice, I did not return to the table: Everything that you do at the table, you do coolly and matter-of-factly.[87] Therefore, I did not sit back down. You do not record memories in a cool, matter-of-fact way.
Inka’s magical classes on experiencing art are still alive within us, and if we look around more carefully, we become aware that they still accompany us today. And at times even hurry on ahead of us. Only later do we become conscious of the fact that the steps we took afterwards were also guided by Inka, even at times when she was far away.
She was a friend of extraordinary authority, not just in terms of the master-student relationship. With a tender smile, she showed us the way without expressly describing it to us. She allowed us to make our own choices and interpretations. She expected us to make independent decisions. With her warm voice, she alleviated resistance and failures, waited patiently until we had achieved our goal.
We had to grow up quickly in order to follow this instruction and to understand what it meant. Ever so often, it is enough to close our eyes to be able to see – and to concentrate in order to feel the magic of the art.
It was the most wonderful lesson in the discovery of
shifts of mood, which are hidden in art.
It was a moveable feast.
Prof. dr hab. inż. arch. Marek Pabich, head of the department for drawing, painting and sculpture, Director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Planning, Łódź Technical University (Politechnika Łódzka), 2023
[83] Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast, 1964.
[84] 74, rue du Cardinal Lemoine.
[85] In the Santiago du Chili park stands the bust of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry created by Madeleine Tezenas du Montcel.
[86] Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Le petit prince [The Little Prince], 1943.
[87] Zbigniew Herbert: Ostrożnie ze stołem (Careful with the Table), in: Studium przedmiotu (Study of the Object), 1961.