10th Biennial Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, Vilnius, 26–28 June

The main theme of this year’s 10th jubilee ESSWE conference, which took place in Vilnius from 26 to 28 June, was esotericism and rationality. In our paper titled “One Must See With All Eyes”: Art, Science, and Esotericism in the Early Decades of the Polish People’s Republic, we therefore chose to share our reflections on the lesser-known legacy of Władysław Strzemiński’s artistic theory and practice during the two postwar decades in Poland. This topic currently represents one of the key directions of our research.

Władysław Strzemiński (1893–1952) was one of the most radical theorists of modernism in contemporary Polish art, whose writings and works became fundamental for the postwar generation of artists. Strzemiński’s pre-war theory of Unism (1928), grounded in typical modernist principles of flatness and the unity of the image, aimed to establish a scientifically rigorous and verifiable approach to visual art. This, in turn, led him to formulate, in the 1940s and early 1950s, an objective, empirically verifiable Theory of Vision (1958), supported by scientific knowledge in the field of eye physiology.

However, as we argue, previous discussions of Strzemiński’s theory have lacked an analysis of how his postulates—through polemics and unorthodox interpretations—contributed to opening postwar Polish art to spiritual themes that extended beyond the strict boundaries of modernism. In our paper, we therefore proposed a reflection on the non-obvious, spiritually oriented, both affirmative and critical reception of Strzemiński’s theories, examined through three case studies: Urszula Broll (1930–2020), Jerzy Ćwiertnia (1928–2009), and Andrzej Strumiłło (1927–2020).

All the artists mentioned above struggled in the early stages of their careers with the tension between objective, scientific knowledge and subjective perception, seeking ways to reconcile the contradictions internalized at the very core of modernist reflection. The presence of this dilemma in Strzemiński’s thought enabled them to develop their own positions—grounded in both intuitive insight and intellectual as well as ethical commitment. In this process, each artist drew on different esoteric and philosophical inspirations, which helped them understand vision as a force capable of transforming consciousness and transcending the boundaries of matter. These non-literal, unorthodox interpretations of Strzemiński’s theories reveal a much richer, spiritually oriented trajectory within the postwar history of Polish art.