Warsaw. Karol Tchorek's studio open – admission, hours, address

After the tedious processes of inventory and arrangement, the Warsaw Museum invites residents and tourists to visit the sculptor's studio and the creator of monuments Karol Tchorek. The artist's workshop at Smolna Street can be seen every Tuesday.

The historic studio of Karol Tchorek has been under the care of the Warsaw Museum since 2022. As we reported a year and a half ago at tvnwarszawa.pl, museum employees conducted an inventory of the studio's resource and its arrangement, so that in the future it was possible to present the works and exhibits of a wider audience collected in it. As part of the works carried out in cooperation with the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art of UKSW, actions were carried out to protect part of the book collection, glass negatives and paintings.

The Warsaw Museum has just announced that the studio is available to visitors from Tuesday, February 25. – By respecting her earlier fate, we see her primarily as a place of research and popularizing work related to the achievements of the coward family, the implementation of intimate forms of education and institutional cooperation. We would like to continue the idea of ​​Katy Bentall, who treated the studio as a space for meetings, intellectual and artistic exchange – says Lena Wicherkiewicz, curator of the Warsaw Museum.

The most famous works of Karol Tchorek

Karol Tchorek was a sculptor, creator of portraits and monuments, known primarily for plaques in many places commemorating the fights and death of Poles during World War II. He created his studio in the early 1950s from the remains of a demolished tenement house at 36 Smolna Street. As the Warsaw Museum reminds, he moved part of the architectural equipment and detail from an earlier studio located at Marszałkowska 63, liquidated in connection with the construction of the MDM estate.

On Smolna Tchorek he created the most famous works: motherhood (1952), the tombstone of the painter Władysław Strzemiński, Warsaw autumn (1975), but above all coordinated the implementation of these plaques commemorating the victims of German crimes.

The studio also has a few preserved pre -war sculptures of the artist: Kogutki from 1937 and a child lying from 1938, plaster models of sculptures, projects, drawings, as well as souvenirs of him run by him in 1943–1944 and 1945–1951 “Nike” Art Salon . A part of the ethnographic collection is also stored in the studio, which the artist built with passion for many years, primarily the sculptures “Primitia from Powiśle” by Leon Kudła (1879–1964).

After the artist's death in 1985, thanks to the efforts of his son Mariusz and the wife of Zofia Tchorek, the studio was entered in the register of monuments.

Admission, opening hours, tickets

Mariusz Tchorek died in 2004. His wife, British artist Katy Bentall, took care of the studio. – She carried out a renovation of the studio, and her dream was to become an open and live place, where meetings with art and artists took place. At some point, unfortunately, its maintenance became quite difficult for Bentall, mainly for financial and organizational reasons. That is why in 2021 she decided to pass it on to the city, which last year invited the Warsaw Museum to cooperate – said Lena Wicherkiewicz in 2023.

Admission to the studio of Karol Tchorek will be possible on Tuesdays from 10-16. The studio is located in the tenement house outbuilding on ul. Smolna 36 lok. 11. A normal ticket costs five zlotys, reduced – three. They are available at the ticket office of the Warsaw Museum or on the website of the facility. Group inputs and studio visits are possible after prior appointment.

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