Artworks—rare, valuable, and desired—often fall victim to theft, appropriation or war­time losses. But just as often artistic heritage is the sub­ject of ideological and political appropriation. These appropriations interest Marcin Maciejow­ski, a distin­guished pain­ter who navigates through Polish environs with great intuition and pas­sion. In his latest works the artist recovers Raphael’s Por­trait of a Young Man, stolen by the Nazis, but he also polemicizes with the con­servative, statist model of “national heritage and sport” which now forms part of Poland’s ministry of cul­ture. For Maciejow­ski, the Old Masters are part of moder­nity, and he also inter­prets historical pain­tings or the Jagiel­lonian tapestries in this con­tem­porary manner. He restores them to modern sen­sitivity and treats them as metaphors for cur­rent topics and political disputes.

Maciejowski’s other great theme is the image of the modern woman. His gal­lery of bold, charismatic figures inc­ludes Eve pluc­king fruit from the apple tree in paradise, con­tem­porary women curators, and also par­ticipants in the recent women’s strike figh­ting for their rights. Maciejowski’s pain­ting is realistic in the deepest sense of the word, con­sisting of creating images that speak in our voices, take part in ongoing social chan­ges, and convey their everyday atmosphere.