Andrzej Wróblewski's "Two married women" sold for a record fee

Another record in the history of Polish art market has been broken at Tuesday's auction "Post-War & Contemporary Art" at DESA Unicum, said Monika Pietraszek, representing the the biggest and the oldest auction house in Poland.

The previous records also belonged to DESA Unicum - Wojciech Fangor's M22 - bought for 7.4 million zlotys in December 2020 - used to be the highest sold painting, whereas Magdalena Abakanowicz's Crowd III was the highest sold work of art in Poland (13.2 million zlotys in October 2021).

Last year's record price paid for a painting was surpassed twice at Tuesday's auction, as Roman Opałka's Detail 407817 - 434714 from the series 1965/1 - ∞ went for a record-breaking 8,64 million zlotys. It has therefore become the highest sold work by this artist worldwide.

The overall turnover of the auction amounted to nearly 32 million zlotys - the highest in the history of Poland's art market.

The "Two married women" ("Two young married women") by Andrzej Wróblewski is one of the most important pieces in Polish post-war art. The painting, created in 1949 as the second piece in the Social contrasts series, depicts two women representing different values.

One of them is a young and affluent elegant lady holding a black dog with a blue ribbon. The other is a proud mother - a proletarian, holding a young newborn in her arms. On the back of the canvas, is a sketch for Wróblewski's 1951 painting Youth Convention in West Berlin.

Inny obraz Wróblewskiego z 1953 roku został sprzedany na wtorkowej aukcji za 1,8 mln zł.

Another painting by Wróblewski, Landscape with the vast sky (1953), was sold during Tuesday's auction for 1.8 million zlotys.

Also sold at the auction at DESA Unicum were 45 works by the most outstanding post-WWII artists, such as: Stanisław Fijałkowski, Jan Tarasin, Erna Rosenstein, Jerzy Nowosielski, Tomasz Ciecierski, Józef Hałas, Tadeusz Kantor and Edward Dwurnik.

Jan Dobkowski's Oceanid of Delos became the artist's highest sold work (204,000 zlotys). Other works sold for record prices include Stanisław Fijałkowski's 24.X.71 (480,000), Alfred Lenica's Spots in Heaven and Earth (408,000), Teresa Tyszkiewicz's "Gesture" (192,000), as well as Baikal by Edward Dwurnik (504,000).