*** TO FREEDOM. Polish Art of the 80s and 90s from the Collection of Werner Jerke from Recklinghausen
Jul 30 - Nov 14 2021
Pl. Zdrojowy 2, Sopot
Jerke collects with expertise and a sense of the specificity of Polish art. He has his hand on her pulse and knows perfectly well where he is beating. He chooses accurately and with sensitivity.
By profession, Werner Jerke is an ophthalmologist, owner of an ophthalmology clinic and a winemaker. However, he is best known as a collector of Polish art and the founder of the first private museum of Polish art outside Poland. The museum is located in Recklinghausen (Ruhr District), Germany, in a building that was designed by a collector himself.
Born in Gliwice to a German family, Jerke left Poland at the age of 23. He started collecting art of Young Poland and the École de Paris. Currently, his collection consists of several hundred items. He focuses on the Polish avant-garde of inter-war and post-war modernity.
The exhibition at PGS in Sopot will mainly present paintings from the 1980s. The works of the members of the Warsaw Gruppa - Ryszard Grzyb, Paweł Kowalewski, Jarosław Modzelewski, Włodzimierz Pawlak, Marek Sobczyk, Roman Woźniak; Wrocław's Luxus, Łódź Kaliska, Grupa Ładnie, or classics such as Edward Dwurnik or Leon Tarasewicz, and artists of the younger generation, such as Radek Szlaga.
The presentation, consisting of over 60 works, is a selection of works with a politically or socially engaged character. It presents a slightly less known side of the collector's hobbies of Werner Jerke.