Krystiana Robb-Narbutt, You Can’t Count on Me, 1972, drawing on paper, 64.5 x 49.5 cm

Krystiana Robb-Narbutt, Barbara S’s Dream. Dedicated to Grzegorz Przemyk, 1976/1977, drawing on paper, 62 x 48 cm

Two works from the Galeria Studio Collection by Krystiana Robb Narbutt (1945–2006) are outstanding examples of her early work. The drawing You Can’t Count on Me belongs to the series You Can’t Count on Me I Won’t Defend Myself from 1972–75, inspired by Barbara Sadowska’s tome of the same title. As Agata Jakubowska has written: “The figures depicted by the artist are enslaved, their bodies bound with a rope restraining their movements […], the relations appearing here concern the people closest to each other.” The drawing found its way into the collection in 1973, belonging to a group of the earliest acquisitions made during the period under Józef Szajna’s directorship. Robb-Narbutt participated in the exhibition “Prints and Drawings from the Studio Collection,” in October 1972, and the drawing may already have been shown then.

Robb-Narbutt’s second work in the Studio Collection is also associated with Barbara Sadowska. It is more abstract, constructed from a dense fabric of organic and obtuse forms. The composition contains elements of color—the artist introduced colored ink into her work at this stage, which she later used frequently. Barbara S. is in fact Barbara Sadowska, a poet and political activist associated with the democratic opposition, and the mother of high school graduate Grzegorz Przemyk. Przemyk was murdered in 1983 by officers of the Citizen’s Militia, which is remembered to this day as an act of violence under martial law—a young boy losing his life in an absurd way, martyred for no reason. The only “reason” was to sow terror. The title of the drawing was probably given (or at least given in full) at a later date. When Barbara Sadowska died in 1986, the work became a kind of epitaph dedicated to the memory of two people close to the artist. Barbara S.’s Dream was presented for the first time at an exhibition of prints and drawings from the Galeria Studio Collection which opened in November 1991.

Krystiana Robb-Narbutt was born and lived in Warsaw. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1965–71, and after her studies she co-founded the Sejf group. In her work, she revisited her family’s history, most of whom perished in ghettos and death camps during the war. She reconstructed their memory and fate in a metaphorical way, creating assemblages, objects and small paintings on board.

Dorota Jarecka