Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits will be exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery between 27 March and 13 July 2025, forming part of the UK/Poland Season 2025. Travelling to the UK for the first time, the free display will include 16 of Wyspiański’s most outstanding portraits, many of which have never been seen outside Poland.

From 27 March until 13 July 2025, the National Portrait Gallery will present Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits, a new display that celebrates the painter, designer, poet and originator of modern Polish theatre. In partnership with the National Museum in Kraków and the National Museum in Poznań, and organised with the support of the Polish Ministry of Culture and the Polish Cultural Institute, the display at the Gallery forms part of the UK/Poland Season 2025. The season, which was initiated by the British Council, brings together a diverse programme of over 100 multi-artform events in 40 cities across both the UK and Poland this year.

Stanisław Wyspiański (1869-1907) is considered one of Poland’s most important artists. Working across a variety of mediums and disciplines, his art shaped the development of visual culture in Poland at what was to prove a decisive moment in the history of the country.

As a leading figure in the modernist movement, Young Poland, Wyspiański was hailed by many Poles to be the voice of the nation partitioned by occupying forces. In response to the country’s political non-existence, Young Poland sought to create a new national art based on folk traditions.. Based in Kraków, Young Poland emerged as a means through which artists explored cultural identity, and was instrumental in helping bring about Polish independence in 1918.

Alongside self-portraits and portraits of the artist’s family, Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits will highlight well-known Cracovians and figures associated with the Young Poland movement, including writer Jerzy Żuławski and actor Irena Solska. In these portraits, Wyspiański uses bold colour and emphatic line, with figures pressed tight against the picture plane or at a sharp angle leaning away from it. The display will also include a drawing of the Norwegian writer and musician, Dagny Juel-Przybyszewska, who befriended Wyspiański when she and her husband, the Polish writer Stanisław Przybyszewski, moved from Berlin to Kraków in 1898.

Juel-Przybyszewska had a close relationship with Edvard Munch in Berlin, having become involved with the bohemian life of the city, and her husband authored the first influential book on Munch’s art there. In Kraków, the couple introduced Wyspiański to the work of Munch. Portraits of Dagny Juel-Przybyszewska and Stanisław Przybyszewski will be respectively displayed as part of Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits and the National Portrait Gallery’s major spring exhibition, Edvard Munch Portraits (13 March – 15 June 2025), demonstrating the artistic connections between Wyspiański and Munch and the impact of bohemian relationships that extended across Europe.

Dr. Alison Smith
Curator of Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits

“Stanisław Wyspiański’s portraits reflect the Young Poland fascination with individualism and subjectivity, but also confront the idea of the community to which the sitters belong. They emphasize personal freedoms whilst simultaneously acknowledge the importance of each individual’s cultural roots.”

Professor Andrzej Szczerski
Director, National Museum of Kraków

Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits has been curated by Dr. Alison Smith, previously Chief Curator of the National Portrait Gallery and now Director of Collections and Research at the Wallace Collection, and Professor Andrzej Szczerski, Director of the National Museum of Kraków. It complements the exhibition Edvard Munch: Portraits, offering visitors the opportunity to see Wyspiański’s portrait of Munch’s close friend Dagny Juel-Przybyszewska, who played a key role in introducing Munch’s work to artists in Kraków.


Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits is accompanied by a publication of the same name, edited by Alison Smith with Julia Griffin, and is available to pre-order here.

Source: Polish Cultural Institute

Photos: National Museum in Kraków

WHERE: National Portrait Gallery, Room 14, 3rd floor, St. Martin’s Pl, London WC2H 0HE

WHEN: 27 March 2025, 10:30 AM. The exhibition will be open until 13 July 2025, from 10:30 AM to 6:00 PM.

TICKETS: Free admission