NDR/Arte

From Factories to Artwork – The Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź

Where electric looms rattled around 1900, today works by Joseph Beuys, among others, generate frictional energy. A restored industrial complex in the center of Łódź is the home of the Muzeum Sztuki – for 90 years the address in Eastern Europe when it comes to abstract art. “From Factory to Artwork – The Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź” looks back at the industrial as well as artistic revolution that shaped the city for centuries and made the creation of this exceptional museum possible.

First came textile manufacturers, then abstract artists, and today curious visitors – the countless transformations that Łódź has undergone from the beginning of the 19th century until today are complex. “From Factory to Artwork – The Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź” puts the industrial as well as artistic revolution in context and offers a glimpse into a museum with an enviable collection.

Why did the visionary museum founders Wladyslaw Strzeminski and Katharina Kobro come to this working-class city of all places in 1931? Why did not only Max Ernst but later also Joseph Beuys give away his art there? And how did it come about that art education was already being carried out in factories here in the 1960s, before the word for it was invented in the West?

Together with the viewers, author Sylvie Kürsten discovers one of the first abstract museums in the world. In 2021, the internationally renowned museum celebrated its 90th anniversary. Nine decades of radical questioning of the status quo – an encouragement to emancipation through art across several political systems.