Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Mateusz Grabowski gallerist

Mateusz Grabowski was born in Wizna, Congress Poland (now Poland) in 1904 and graduated as a Master of Pharmacy from Stefan Batory University in Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1931. In 1939, in order to escape the invading German Army, he fled Poland for France with the Polish Army, as a military pharmacist. After the fall of France in 1940 he arrived in England with the Free Polish Army; following his demobilisation, after working as a pharmacist, he founded the Grabowski Gallery in London in 1959, where he promoted young artists (often émigrés) and became an early champion of  Pop Art, Op Art and contemporary tapestry in 'Swinging' London.

Born: 1904 Wizna, Congress Poland (now Poland)

Died: 1976 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1940

Other name/s: Mateusz Grabowsky, M.B. Grabowski


Biography

Pharmacist, art collector and gallerist, Mateusz Bronislaw Grabowski was born in Wizna, Congress Poland (now Poland) in 1904. He initially wanted to become an architect, but eventually followed in his uncle’s footsteps, completing pharmaceutical studies in 1931 at Stefan Batory University in Vilnius, Lithuania, afterwards becoming his apprentice. Until the outbreak of war, he worked as a pharmacist in Poland, first in Piotrków Trybunalski, near Lodz, and then Warsaw. In 1939, following the German invasion, he left for France with the Polish Army, posted as head of an in-house pharmacy in a military hospital, where he was responsible for managing sanitary supplies.

In 1940, following the fall of France, Grabowski moved to Britain, where he worked as a pharmacist in a number of both military and civilian hospitals. In 1945 he became the first chairman of the professional organisation, The Polish Pharmaceutical Association Abroad. In 1948, after completing the courses and passing the necessary exams for his UK professional qualifications, he became a licensed pharmacist. Initially, he established a small chemist shop on the outskirts of London and, after a year, he moved his business into Sloane Avenue, in fashionable Chelsea. The pharmacy also ran a mail-order service to Poland. Grabowski became a naturalised British citizen in 1958. In 1959, Grabowski established his eponymous Grabowski Gallery, located on Sloane Avenue, next to his pharmacy, with the aim of promoting young artists, often émigrés, whose work he felt had something to offer. The gallery was inaugurated with the first exhibition of postwar Polish painting, Image in Progress, which was considered ‘seminal for early Pop and marked a considerable increase in the number of private commercial galleries servicing the expanded art market’ (Stęepieńn 2005, p. 110). This was followed by a show for Grupa49, a collective of Polish émigré artists. Grabowski subsequently became an early champion of Pop Art in England, exhibiting many of the forerunners of the movement and collecting important works by young British artists.

In 1962 he organised Image in Revolt, a two-person exhibition of figurative paintings by two talented young artists, Derek Boshier and Frank Bowling (born in British Guyana in 1934). In the early 1960s the gallery was one of the first to show Op Art, a form of hard-edged geometrical abstraction, characterised by its dizzying optical effects. It also supported modern and contemporary tapestries, organising a group show in 1964 which included works by Jean Cocteau, Francois Lauvin, and fellow Polish émigré Tadek Beutlich (who became a frequent exhibitor at the gallery). Other exhibitors included Boshier, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Anthony Benjamin, Conroy Maddox, Ken Adams and the Macedonian sculptor, Petar Hadži Boškov (the earliest showcasing of Macedonian sculpture in the UK). Grabowski also supported many Polish artists who had settled in England, including Janina Baranowska, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Caziel, Stanislaw Frenkiel, Marek Laczynski, and Piotr Mleczko, and, from 1959 to 1961, he hosted group exhibitions for the recently-formed Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain (APA). Grabowski also exhibited work by Jewish artists, including émigré painter, Willy Tirr and Pop-influenced printmaker, Michael Rothenstein, both represented in the Ben Uri Collection. The gallery also awarded a prize for the best paintings submitted from art schools in London.

In 1975, due to declining health, Grabowski closed the gallery. During its fifteen years of cultural and promotional activity, around 220 exhibitions were held in its premises, and it was highly regarded among several contemporary art exhibition spaces initiated by émigré Poles in London, including Halima Nałęcz's Drian Galleries in Bayswater, Jan Wieliczko's Centaur Gallery in Highgate and Feliks Topolski's studio and exhibition under the arches in Waterloo. Mateusz Grabowski died in London, England in 1976 of cancer. Before his death, he bequeathed the majority of his collection (around 400 works, many of them by young British artists) to the National Museum in Warsaw and to the Sztuki Museum in Lodz. He also established a foundation in his name, The M.B. Grabowski Fund, with the task of promoting culture, history and knowledge of Poland within Britain. In accordance with Grabowski’s will, almost all of his assets were given to this fund. In 2007 the Sztuki Museum organised the exhibition Swinging London, which displayed works from the Grabowski Collection, including pieces by well-known British Pop artists, Derek Boshier and Pauline Boty. In the UK public domain, several of the gallery's catalogues from 1959 onwards are held in the Special Collections of Leeds University Library, including for exhibitions by Ivor Abrahams, Michael Sandle and Michael Rothenstein. In summer 2024 Ben Uri Gallery and Museum featured Grabowski in its exhibition Cosmopolis: The Impact of Refugee Art Dealers in London.

Related books

  • Piotr Piotrowski, Pascal Dubourg Glatigny and Jérôme Bazin, Art Beyond Borders: Artistic Exchange in Communist Europe (1945-1989) (Leipzig: Central European University Press 2020), p. 205
  • Justyna Stęepieńn, British Pop Art and Postmodernism (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015)
  • Iwona Dymarczyk, Aptekarz i majoliki: o Mateuszu B. Grabowskim i jego krakowskiej kolekcji ceramiki aptecznej [The Pharmacist and His Majolica. About Mateusz B. Grabowski and His Collection of Apothecary Ceramics from Cracow] (Kraków, Poznań: Wydawnictwo Kontekst, 2015)
  • Małgorzata Geron, Jerzy Malinowski & Jan Wiktor Sienkiewicz, eds., Art of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland & the Republic of Ireland in 20th-21st Centuries and Polish-British & Irish Art Relations (Toruń: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, Warszawa: Polish Institute of World Art Studies, 2015), p. 230
  • Jan Wiktor Sienkiewicz, Sztuka W Poczekalni [Art in the waiting room: Studies in the history of Polish art in exile 1939-1989] (Toruń: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, 2012)
  • Douglas Hall, Art in Exile: Polish Painters in Post-war Britain (Bristol: Sansom & Company, 2008), pp. 265-8, 291-4
  • Jan Wiktor Sienkiewicz, Polskie galerie sztuki w Londynie w drugiej połowie XX wieku [Polish Art Galleries in London in the Second Half of the 20th c.] (Lublin-London: UMCS, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University Press, 2003)
  • ‘Pharmacist and Gallery Man’, The Times, 17 June 1968, p. 8
  • F. G. Stone, ‘Art Notes’, The Jewish Chronicle, 19 August 1960, p. 27

Related organisations

  • Grabowski Gallery (founder)
  • Stefan Bator University (student)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Cosmopolis: The Impact of Refugee Art Dealers in London, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London (2024)
  • Józef Czapski, Grabowski Gallery, London (1974)
  • Ken Adams, Grabowksi Gallery (1972)
  • Willy Tirr, Grabowski Gallery (1970)
  • Conroy Maddox, Paintings and Collage-paintings, Grabowski Gallery (1963)
  • Frank Bowling, William Thomson, Neil Stocker, Grabowski Gallery (1963)
  • Tadek Beutlich: Woodcuts, Tapestries, Grabowski Gallery (1963)
  • Michael Rothenstein, Grabowksi Gallery (1963)
  • Marek Laczynski, Grabowski Gallery (1962)
  • Janina Baranowska, Grabowski Gallery (1962)
  • Piotr Mleczko, Grabowski Gallery (1961)
  • Five Belgian Painters from London, Grabowski Gallery (1961)
  • Stanislaw Frenkiel, Grabowski Gallery (1960)
  • Petar Hadži Boškov: Sculptures, Prints, Drawings, Grabowski Gallery (1960)
  • Group 49 Exhibition, Grabowski Gallery (1959)
  • Image in Progress, including works by Derek Boshier, David Hockney and Allen Jones, Grabowski Gallery (1959)