Odyssey

Odyssey

ODYSSEY

ROBERT KOENIG

Robert Koenig was born in Manchester, England in 1951 of Polish immigrants. In 1978 he graduated from the prestigious Slade School of Art at the University of London where he specialised in sculpture. Since that time he has been living and working in England as a professional sculptor.

Robert has been visiting his mother’s home village of Dominikowice in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in South East Poland since 1971. During these visits he has always tried to make sense of family history and find his own place within it. In 1996 he felt ready to confront these issues of ancestry, belonging, family history and tradition. In order to do this he undertook his major sculpture project ODYSSEY. The ODYSSEY project involved carving a large group of male and female limewood figures out of lime trees that grew in and around the area in which his mother was born and grew up. They would be trees that had their roots where he had his, trees under whose canopy his mother would have played and worked. These trees bore witness to the many dramatic events that shaped the lives of the people in the village over the past 100 years.

Odyssey

The trees were carved in the village in Poland, away from the artist’s English studio. It was important for the integrity of the project to create the carvings, which represented these ancestors, in amongst the very fields in which they worked for generations, to be open to any influences, energies and inspirations which working in such an environment could bring.

Robert Koenig spent long periods in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2001 in the village where he managed to carve 23 figures. They were carved quickly, intensively and roughly, retaining all the chisel marks. Their proportions were elongated and with their arms by their sides they were designed to look as if they were recently and suddenly pulled out of the ground. All the figures have similar upright poses to accentuate a certain primeval rhythm when assembled together. They represent nobody in particular but all the ancestors who lived and worked on the land.

This crowd of carved people travelling through Europe is taking on a greater dimension and is symbolising the great migrations of people throughout the ages.

In 2006 Odyssey was brought over to the United Kingdom and has been touring galleries, cathedrals and churches. In each new venue Robert tries to carve a new figure, which represents the place but which joins the main group on its travels. By 2011 40 Odyssey figures have been carved.

Robert Koenig

ODYSSEY is not just an exhibition of woodcarvings, but is primarily a travelling installation, a performance, a project which is continuously developing and augmenting in the public gaze. The public is witness and participant to the ODYSSEY journey which has stretched from the steps of the Cathedral of St Jura in the city of Lwów in the Ukraine, through the fields, mountains and valleys of Southern Poland, the Cathedral steps in Chichester to a grave in a cemetery in North Manchester.

Robert Koenig

www.robertkoenig-sculptor.com

To my mother, Maria, whose personal journey will forever be an inspiration.

Her journey has been my Odyssey.

To my wife, Regina, whom I first met in Dominikowice at the start of the “Odyssey” project in 1996, and who has sacrificed much during my spiritual journey.

To my sons, Janek and Adam; my roots are their roots.

To my sister, Barbara, who over 15 years, has criss-crossed Europe to tirelessly photograph and document Odyssey’s steady march.

To Jadwiga and Philip Adey, whose help with this catalogue has been immeasurable.

To Zdzisław Tohl, Director of the Dwory Karwacjanów and Gładyszów Museum in Gorlice, Poland who gave Odyssey its first ever showing in 1997 and without whose help and support the Galician Odyssey tour to Lwów in the Ukraine, Tarnów, Zakopane, Gorlice and Kraków in Poland in 2004 would not have been possible.

Photography: Barbara König, Robert Huk, Gill Orsman, Kippa Mathews, Gary Weston, Phil Yeomans, Russell Sach, Robert Bloomfield, Pauline Neild, Craigie Horsfield.

Texts: Prof. Jerzy Madeyski, Prof. Piotr Jargusz, Prof. W. Kunz, Milena Adaszek, Agata Peksa, Ruth Dickinson, Robert Koenig.

Design by: Julie Stevenson, Creative by Design, Oxford, UK

Odyssey celebrates its 15th year on tour with a showing at St Martin in the Field, Trafalgar Square, London between March 19 – July 20, 2012 and the Bow Methodist Church, London between July 23 – September 4, 2012.

IBC

Odyssey

1997–2012

A sculptor’s spiritual journey

Contents Introduction .........................................................................................................................................................iii Robert Koenig – an artist who talks with the spirits. ............................................................................1 Dominikowice village, Poland –1997 ..........................................................................................................5 Gorlice, Dwór Karwacjanów Gallery, Poland – 1997..........................................................................19 Tarnow, Poland – 1998 ..................................................................................................................................25 Lwów, Ukraine – 2004....................................................................................................................................31 Tarnow, Poland – 2004 ..................................................................................................................................57 Zakopane, Tatra Mountains, Poland – 2004 .........................................................................................61 Kraków, Museum of Archaeology, Poland – 2004 ..............................................................................65 Hove, All Saints Church – 2006 ..................................................................................................................77 Chichester Cathedral – 2007 ......................................................................................................................83 Portsmouth Cathedral – 2007 ....................................................................................................................89 Milton Keynes, Church of Christ the Cornerstone – 2007 ...............................................................91 Rochester Cathedral – 2007 ........................................................................................................................99 Stockport Art Gallery – 2007.................................................................................................................... 103 Salisbury Cathedral – 2008 ...................................................................................................................... 111 York Minster – 2008 ..................................................................................................................................... 115 Cwmaman, St Joseph’s Church, South Wales – 2008 ................................................................... 121 Town Church, St Helier, Jersey – 2009.................................................................................................. 125 Worcester Cathedral – 2009 .................................................................................................................... 131 Odyssey heads .............................................................................................................................................. 138 The Lime Tree ................................................................................................................................................. 140 Places Odyssey didn’t reach ..................................................................................................................... 143 Speyer – Germany .............................................................................................................................. 144 Lwów –Ukraine ..................................................................................................................................... 153 Przemyślany – Ukraine ...................................................................................................................... 154 Paris – France ........................................................................................................................................ 159 Zakopane – Poland ............................................................................................................................. 163 Odyssey Exhibition 2006–09, Visitors comments. .......................................................................... 165 Articles in Polish ............................................................................................................................................. 177 Polish comments ........................................................................................................................................... 194 Galician Shadows ......................................................................................................................................... 195 Robert Koenig – Further information .................................................................................................... 200

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ODYSSEY

“Dziady� is a poetic drama by the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. It is considered one of the great works of European Romanticism and refers to Dziady, an ancient Slavic feast commemorating the dead (the “forefathers�).

Dziady was the original Polish title for the Odyssey project.

iii

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY Robert Koenig was born in Manchester, England in 1951 of Polish immigrants. In 1978 he graduated from the prestigious Slade School of Art at the University of London where he specialised in sculpture. Since that time he has been living and working in England as a professional sculptor.

Robert has been visiting his mother’s home village of Dominikowice in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in South East Poland since 1971. During these visits he has always tried to make sense of family history and find his own place within it. In 1996 he felt ready to confront these issues of ancestry, belonging, family history and tradition. In order to do this he undertook his major sculpture project ODYSSEY. The ODYSSEY project involved carving a large group of male and female limewood figures out of lime trees that grew in and around the area in which his mother was born and grew ROBERT KOENIG

up. They would be trees that had their roots where he had his, trees under whose canopy his mother would have played and worked. These trees bore witness to the many dramatic events that shaped the lives of the people in the village over the past 100 years.

The trees were carved in the village in Poland, away from the artist’s English studio. It was important for the integrity of the project to create the carvings, which represented these ancestors, in amongst the very fields in which they worked for generations, to be open to any influences, energies and inspirations which working in such an environment could bring.

Robert Koenig spent long periods in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2001 in the village where he managed to carve 23 figures. They were carved quickly, intensively and roughly, retaining all the chisel marks. Their proportions were elongated and with their arms by their sides they were designed to look as if they were recently and suddenly pulled out of the ground. All the figures have similar upright poses to accentuate a certain primeval rhythm when assembled together. They represent nobody in particular but all the ancestors who lived and worked on the land.

This crowd of carved people travelling through Europe is taking on a greater dimension and is symbolising the great migrations of people throughout the ages.

ODYSSEY is not just an exhibition of woodcarvings, but is primarily a travelling installation, a performance, a project which is continuously developing and augmenting in the public gaze. The public is witness and participant to the ODYSSEY journey which has stretched from the steps of the Cathedral of St Jura in the city of Lwów in the Ukraine, through the fields, mountains and valleys of Southern Poland, the Cathedral steps in Chichester to a grave in a cemetery in North Manchester.

iv

Robert Koenig – an artist who talks with the spirits.

Talking with Robert Koenig one feels an inner depth. He talks about his work with deep feeling, he appears to be in a state of constant inspiration. Observing him one sees some kind of inner strength, which guides his work and which speaks through him. Getting to know him a little more one can suppose that this force is the voice of his ancestors. In 2004 Professor Piotr Jargusz from Krakow, Poland said: “Robert Koenig is possessed. He dreams his dream and talks with the spirits. He stands astride two worlds, that of the living and of the dead. He stands between the old culture of remembrance and the new culture of forgetfulness. Robert Koenig talks with the spirits more often than others. He asks about that which is important: pain, love, asks about the essence and meaning of living. He seeks advice on what to do. He asks about identity. He takes advantage of the oldest law of the imagination; he calls up the deceased, looks out for their faces, listens out for their steps…”

Robert Koenig – artist, sculptor- is an exceptional individual. He sees in the world many analogies. He sees the links between the past and the future, the spirit world and the material world. His fascination with that which once was, with tradition, the past, heritage is represented by his major series from the 1980’s called “Temple and Portals”, the series “At the Edge of centuries” from the 1990’s and now the “Odyssey” project.

He says he is drawn to the past and finds it difficult to escape its fascination. He finds it difficult to create without profound and, looking at his works, monumental thoughts.

LIMEWOOD FIGURE FROM THE “TEMPLE AND PORTALS” SERIES 1985

“TABLEAU NO.1” FROM THE “AT THE EDGE OF CENTURIES” SERIES. WOOD AND PHOTOGRAPHIC TECHNIQUE 1995

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

Who is this man living on the borders of two worlds?

Robert Koenig was born in 1951 in Manchester, England. His parents were Polish. His mother Maria was forcibly taken to the Nazi slave labour camps in Germany in 1942 from her home village of Dominikowice in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in South East Poland. After the War she ended up as a refugee in Stockport near Manchester where she met and married Gerhard König, a soldier in the Polish army under allied command.

While still a teenager he won medals for bravery during the successful assault at the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy.

Robert is one of six children and from his earliest years he was interested in his ancestry and in the history of his family. The stories his mother told of her homeland far, far away increased his curiosity. In 1971 he visited the then communist Poland for the first time and experienced a shock to the system. The openness of the people, their warmth and friendly manner was so different from the reserve, which he experienced on a daily basis in England.

After this first visit he knew he would be visiting this land on a regular basis, a place where he felt a closeness to family and to his own roots.

Since early childhood he was drawn to art, to drawing and to sculpture. At the age of 15 he created his first woodcarvings. He later went on to study sculpture at the prestigious Slade School of Art in London and gained a masters degree in 1978. In 1983 he went to the Academy of Fine Arts In Krakow, Poland for further training.

ROBERT ‘S FATHER GERHARD KÖNIG IN HIS POLISH ARMY UNIFORM.

It seems he was appreciated from early on in his career. Between 1982-83 he was invited to take part in the Grizedale Sculpture Project in the English Lake District. For seven months he lived and worked in the forest environment where life was governed by the cycles of nature. The artist would go into the forest for the whole day where he would find the raw materials to create the sculptures, which would be sited where they were made. After a few years the wood sculptures would be swallowed up by the forces of nature. The Grizedale Sculpture Project contributed to a change in the way sculpture was seen and understood in the natural environment. This way of thinking about art in public places continued with Robert Koenig who regularly makes and exhibits his woodcarvings in fields, country parks, town squares, cathedrals and art galleries. He is not keen on being locked away in studios as he feels the carvings are torn away from their roots. “I like to carve in places where people live, work and worship, where the spirits of people from long ago can inspire and influence my every blow of mallet on chisel on wood.”

Robert Koenig’s artistic journey continues to develop. He carves and paints on wood. He fulfils his own artistic needs, putting on large sculpture exhibitions, which communicate his way of thinking, his thoughts and emotions, whilst accepting public and private commissions, which help finance his monumental, very personal projects.

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ROBERT KOENIG – AN ARTIST WHO TALKS WITH THE SPIRITS His latest project “Odyssey” started in November 1996 in his mother’s home village of Dominikowice in South East Poland. It was there that he decided to call up the spirits of his ancestors. He spent an initial six weeks in the village where he acquired 16 lime trees that grew in and around his mother’s farm. He carved them into a group of 2.5m tall male figures that were to represent the ancestors he uncovered whilst compiling a family tree from the records of the local parish church. The spirits of these ancestors together with the lime trees, which in their carved form represented them, were silent witnesses to past events in the village for the past 250 years.

Over the following years Koenig carved a large group of women which joined the group of men. This group has travelled across southern Poland, the city of Lwów in the Ukraine and is now undertaking a tour of galleries, cathedrals and churches in the UK. In each new venue Robert tries to carve a new figure, which represents the place but which joins the main group on its travels.

On the surface Robert Koenig is like everybody else, a husband, father, member of the Polish parish church in Brighton.

Nevertheless in his work there is a great inner depth. He is an artist unique in his field. He admits himself that his art is not typically British. He listens to the voice of his heart, to the voices of his ancestors, who loves working in natural materials and in the natural environment. He is a man who thanks to his devotion, dedication and passion is widely admired and valued by an international audience. His works are moving, contemplative. Despite being so personal, his works have a universal quality.

Adapted from an article by Milena Adaszek for the London based Polish newspaper Nowy Czas, March 2008.

ODYSSEY IN AUNT WISIA’S BARN IN DOMINIKOWICE, 2001

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

DOMINIKOWICE, POLAND 1998

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Dominikowice village, Poland –1997

I have been visiting my mothers home village of Dominikowice in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in South East Poland since 1971. During these visits I have always tried to make sense of family history and find my own place within it. In 1996 I felt ready to confront these issues of ancestry, belonging, family history and tradition. In order to do this I undertook my major sculpture project ODYSSEY. The ODYSSEY project involved carving a large group of male and female limewood figures out of lime trees that grew in and around the area in which my mother was born and grew up. They would be trees that had their roots where I had mine, trees under whose canopy my mother would have played and worked. These trees bore witness to the many dramatic events that shaped the lives of the people in the village over the past 100 years.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

HOME OF THE ODYSSEY LIME TREES IN DOMINIKOWICE.

6

DOMINIKOWICE VILLAGE, POLAND – 1997 The trees were carved in the village in Poland. It was important for the integrity of the project to create the carvings, which represented these ancestors, in amongst the very fields in which they worked for generations, to be open to any influences, energies and inspirations which working in such an environment could bring.

I spent long periods in 1996 and 1997 in the village where I managed to carve 16 tall men. They were carved quickly, intensively and roughly, retaining all the chisel marks. Their proportions were elongated and with their arms by their sides they were designed to look as if they were recently and suddenly pulled out of the ground. All the figures have similar upright poses to accentuate a certain primeval rhythm when assembled together. They represent nobody in particular but all the ancestors who lived and worked on the land. The plan was to come back at a later stage to carve 16 tall women. In the meantime in the summer 1997 I spent a day transporting the crowd of carved figures to various locations to be photographed. This crowd of still, silent wooden ancestral ghosts was to revisit sites with particular family significance. They were to bear witness to past events as told to me by my mother and other relatives in the village.

THE DUDEK FAMILY GRANARY

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

The road taken by Mother to the nearby town of Gorlice, en route to the Nazi slave labour camps in Germany in 1942.

“

It was a very severe winter. 20°C below zero. Just after Christmas 1942 the transport from

Gorlice was about to leave with hundreds of young people rounded up by German soldiers for the slave labour camps in Germany, mostly between the ages of fifteen and twenty five. Some of the parents who went to replace their sons or daughters were sent to concentration camps, as they were not suitable for the specific kind of work.

The 3 years prior to this were a constant nightmare. We were always hidden away since during the night the army surrounded the villages, coming to the houses to grab all the young people from their beds straight to the trucks. The soldiers also waited in the doorways of the churches and in the streets. My sister Julie and I never slept in our beds at home, we had so many hiding places such as in specially constructed double ceilings in the stables, or in haystacks, but the German soldiers searched everywhere. In January 1942 the Germans gave orders for all people of a certain age group to report to their offices. If such persons did not report then one of their parents would be taken instead. My father kept it a secret when my name appeared on the list, he did not want me to worry. One day my father said to me “Maria, do not worry, you are not going, I won’t let you, I will go in your place instead”. I never slept that night thinking about my

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DOMINIKOWICE VILLAGE, POLAND – 1997 Father. He was 65. He would be too old to work in the camp, he would be hungry or beaten up.

The following morning was a very sad day. I put my best dress and coat on. Being a devoted Catholic I took a holy picture, a prayer book and a set of rosary beads and I trusted God to help me to go through whatever would happen next. As I was leaving, my father wondered where I was going in such a blizzard and severe frost with German soldiers everywhere. He wanted me to have some breakfast but I couldn’t eat. I said, “Dad, don’t worry about me, I will be all right. I am just going to visit my friend and will have breakfast when I come back.” I just left without saying good-bye. After a short walk I turned back to have a last look at my home. It was a one hour walk in heavy snow and blizzard conditions. I went straight to the office and with thoughts of my Father I took my name from the list. At 8pm a long train of cattle trucks was packed with youths for slave labour. Some of them were prepared for the journey and took some food and warm clothes with them. Since I left home without telling anyone in case my father would have put himself in my place, I was not prepared. A lady whose husband was taken away came to say farewell and brought him some sandwiches. But he was thrown out because his leg was gangrenous so she came to me and gave me his sandwiches for which I was very grateful. Our first destination was Krakow.

”

“

Father, Franciszek Dudek, was a well respected village administrator. At the start of the war

everybody was forced to have a German identity card. As a sign of protest father went for his

”

photograph unshaven and without his tie.

MARIA KÖNIG FRANCISZEK DUDEK

Before the First World War Dominikowice was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Franciszek Dudek travelled to the United States 3 times during this period to earn money.

The passenger records for the ship Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse , sailing from Bremen to New York in October 1902 shows Franciszek Dudek as a 26 year old married man with an Austrian ethnicity, living in Galicia, a region of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He lived through two world wars and each time he had to fight for his Polish identity.

It is a curious thing about changing borders and ethnicity. In the 20th century if you were Polish and lived all your life in the city of Lwów you would be considered Austrian before the First World War, Polish in between the wars when Poland became an independent nation and a citizen of the Soviet Union when Stalin invaded and annexed that part of Poland in 1939. Lwów is now part of the Ukraine.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

THE OLD WOODEN FAMILY HOUSE STOOD HERE. IT WAS THE SPOT WHERE MOTHER WAS BORN. THERE HAS BEEN A DUDEK FAMILY HOUSE HERE FOR OVER 250 YEARS, REGULARLY REBUILT AS THE WOOD GOT OLD. HER HOUSE WAS ONE OF THE FIRST IN THE VILLAGE WITH A CHIMNEY AND A WOODEN FLOOR. MOTHER WAS ABLE TO RETURN TO HER CHILDHOOD HOME 30 YEARS AFTER BEING TAKEN AWAY TO THE LABOUR CAMPS. FIVE MONTHS BEFORE HER RETURN THE OLD HOUSE MYSTERIOUSLY BURNED DOWN.

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DOMINIKOWICE VILLAGE, POLAND – 1997

THE DUDEK FAMILY OF DOMINIKOWICE, CIRCA 1919. UNCLE JAN THE SCULPTOR, IS ON THE EXTREME LEFT.

“

In 1921 my mother was expecting her fifth child. She became very ill and the Doctors

diagnosed tuberculosis. She was told to go to a sanatorium where she might be cured of her illness and that she must terminate her pregnancy if she wanted to survive. My mother, a devout Catholic, would never agree to such a proposition. She suffered so much as in those days there were no painkillers. When the baby was born she said, “Take that baby away, I am glad it’s all over”. Seven days later she died. She was only 37 years old. Nobody believed the baby would survive. It was a very tiny baby. Before the funeral the open coffin was left in the house so people and relatives could come to pay tribute to my mother, as she was well known for her charity work and helping the poor. My grandmother put the baby in the open coffin at my mother’s feet and prayed that God would take the baby too. That baby was me. Soon after the funeral I was Christened Maria after my Mother, and Stephanie after my Godmother. My aunt at the time was

”

breast-feeding her baby, so she took me for 3 weeks to be breastfed with her little daughter.

MARIA KÖNIG

(In later life this baby had a granddaughter who in 1997 became the wife of Robert Koenig)

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

“

My happiest day was on a Sunday when I went to church, and after I would meet some school friends. Sunday for us was a special

day in the week. Saturday would be spent cleaning the whole house. All our shoes would be polished ready for Church the next day. All the vegetables would be prepared ready so that we would not have to do any unnecessary work on Sunday as it was a day of rest. Even though we had to walk 4 kilometres on a very rough country road, I loved going to Church. We had a beautiful 300-year-old church. It still is a big parish with a few thousand people. The church is a special one. It is a Sanctuarium of the Miraculous Jesus on the Cross.

Because of that, every year many pilgrims arrive from far and wide. There were many reports of miracles taking place at our Church. I remember when I was taken away to the labour camp during the war I took with me a holy picture from my Church and never parted with

”

it throughout the whole of the war with all its danger. I treasure that holy picture to this day as my relic.

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DOMINIKOWICE VILLAGE, POLAND – 1997

“

I remember when the Germans ordered the people to take down the three big church bells

from our parish because they wanted to use the metal for ammunition. In the middle of the night the men from the village took the church bells down quietly and sank them in the lake. They were

”

never found by the Germans and so were saved.

MARIA KÖNIG

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

As the village administrator over many years grandfather, Franciszek Dudek, would sometimes send his youngest daughter Maria (Robert Koenig’s mother) to the Długosz Palace in Siary with important official documents.

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DOMINIKOWICE VILLAGE, POLAND – 1997

Fields in Dominikowice Some time ago in the village my aunty told me of an incident during the Second World War where a farmer was dragged out of his house by a German soldier to be shot for concealing a farm animal. People had barely enough food to survive. The rest of the food and livestock had to be given up for the German war effort. The man’s wife ran out shielding him and screaming “ You may as well kill me and our five children because we won’t be able to survive without him!� The soldier in an arbitrary and casual way spares his life. I recently bought a field in the village which is visible in the background of this photograph. I had planned to plant 100 trees on this field. Since the purchase I was told that this wartime drama had happened on my field. Currently (2011) the field is empty apart from an army of yellow meadow flowers and dozens of small trees, recently planted. It commands a magnificent view over the surrounding countryside. I heard it has become a favourite location for married couples to have their wedding photos and films made. The fields always

´=DFKRGĹŹĹŽH VĂĄRQHF]NR VNRUR PDV] ]DFKRG]LĂź ER QDV QRJL EROĉ SR W\P SROX FKRG]LĂź ER QDV QRJL EROĉ SR W\P SROX FKRG]LĂź Âľ A plea for the sun to set because “our feet hurt from walking over these fieldsâ€? (excerpt from a Polish folk song)

fascinated me. They look so calm and graceful and yet they remember so many dramas.

ROBERT KOENIG

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

A 200 YEAR OLD WAYSIDE SHRINE TO COMMEMORATE A CHOLERA EPIDEMIC. THE VICTIMS WERE BURIED UNDER THIS MOUND WHICH AT THAT TIME WAS AT THE EDGE OF THE VILLAGE.

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DOMINIKOWICE VILLAGE, POLAND – 1997

“

I remember a very nice Jewish family in the next village who had a little house near the forest.

They were called the Mendels. They had five very pretty daughters. Mr. Mendel was poor but a very good man. He was a good friend of my Father. Before the war he used to go around the village buying all sorts of things such as eggs, chickens and calves. I remember how he said to my Father, “Please pray to your God, because there is going to be a terrible war”. When the war started my Father told him not to worry and that he would help him. Mr. Mendel would not have to come out to the shops as they made arrangements so that in the evenings my father would drop food such as flour, peas, and potatoes in sacks under a bush. Mr. Mendel would pick them up during the night. The Mendel family survived like that for over a year. But the Germans eventually found out about them and took them to a ghetto. If my Father had been found to be helping them he would have been shot immediately. Poland was the only country where the penalty for helping a Jew during the war was instant death.

For some reason I began to be frightened, I couldn’t sleep and always had nightmares about my

”

future.

MARIA KÖNIG

GRANDFATHER WOULD LEAVE A METAL CUP BY THE FAMILY WELL SO THAT ON HOT SUMMER DAYS PASSERS BY COULD QUENCH THEIR THIRST.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

“

… looking through the Church records for Dominikowice village, in the foothills of the

Carpathian mountains in South East Poland, going back to the 1770’s, looking for my place in family history, trying to imagine the daily life of generations of one particular family, ploughing endlessly the same fields, furrow after furrow, the monotonous routine, season after season, the blood, the sweat, fighting the elements, at the mercy of historical events, wars, epidemics… who were these individuals, spanning those 200 years?… the Church records show their names but not their faces, tell of when they married, of the endless children, many not surviving childhood, babies dying at birth, for the official records named simply puer or puella … The furrows witnessed the same daily dramas, babies born in fields, illegitimate secrets hidden in the records, generations never leaving their villages, attached to their land… an eerie gap in the Church records in 1915, when tens of thousands of German, Austrian and Russian soldiers fought what turned out to be the most significant battle of the First World War on the Eastern Front. Poles, under occupation for over 120 years, found themselves forcibly conscripted into opposing armies, hoping their bullets wouldn’t inadvertently hit a relative… Over a thousand artillery pieces gathered to disrupt the rhythm and order of ploughed fields… the body of an unknown soldier from those far off days recently uncovered, having been submerged by tons of earth during one of the barrages, soup still in his canteen… Furrows that witnessed daily joys, dramas, heartache…a man walking to the nearby forest to hang himself, given a casual greeting of ´6]F]ĘŒü %RŮHµ by people working in the field, somehow returning home…2nd World War, German soldiers drag a farmer out into his field to be shot for not disclosing a cow, his wife shields him screaming “you may as well kill me and my five children because we won’t be able to survive without him”, which somehow saves his life… arbitrary and casual… the secret hiding place in a hedge, by a field, where grandfather dropped off food regularly for Mr. Mendel and his five daughters who, as Jews, were in hiding… one day he found the food not collected… unrequited love, a suicide on a path between two fields, remained haunted…repetitive bands of corrugated fields, demanding constant attention, grooves barely visible under layers of snow… ancient weather beaten wayside shrines, made of oak, on mounds of earth in distant fields, away from the houses, memorials to cholera epidemics…generations criss-crossing the same fields,

”

leaving behind invisible traces, energy lines that beckon still…

18

ROBERT KOENIG 2001

Gorlice, Dwór Karwacjanów Gallery, Poland – 1997

FIELDS IN DOMINIKOWICE, 1996 PHOTO: BARBARA KÖNIG

I first visited Poland in 1971 when I was 20 years old. I brought my mother back to her home village after 30 years away. The war had dragged her away from her family to the slave labour camps in Nazi Germany and then on to England as a displaced person. Her father had died in 1945 and her stepmother, who so much wanted reconciliation with the stepdaughter she treated so badly, had died just 3 months before we arrived. So much had happened during that time. Father died when I was 13 years old so Mother had to bring up six children on her own, often holding down two jobs to keep us fed. It was not easy thinking of visiting Poland and meeting up with family after so many years. In those days communist Poland never made it easy for visitors from the capitalist West to visit. Mother’s health was never good after her wartime experiences. In 1971 she was recovering from a serious ear operation and to help with her recovery I felt it was the right time to take her back to her family home in Dominikowice village after so many years away. After an arduous train journey from Manchester via Warsaw and then on to the town of Jasło in the South East of the country we took a taxi for the final 25 kms to the village. It was a special moment to watch my mother and aunt Jula approach each other with the words “Is that You Maryśka?”... “Is that You Julcia?” They hadn’t seen each other for 30 years.

There is one main road through the village but many other houses are dotted around a large valley. Poland had resisted the worst of the communist plans for collective farms.

The valley in Dominikowice was a good example of this resistance. As far as the eye can see there are small fields, all in private ownership and every field cultivated. It was a hot

19

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY summer in 1971 and I remember spending much of my time in those fields, helping out with the harvest, threshing corn and just enjoying life in a beautiful countryside. After years living in the backstreets of Moss Side, Manchester, with only one aunty nearby it was a shock to find out that half the village was in some way related to me. Cousins started appearing from all directions. Looking back at some of the photographs from those days I was fascinated to find that we were even all of similar height. I had uncovered relatives I never had up to that point. The warmth, closeness and resourcefulness of the people took me by surprise and had me hooked forever. I wanted more of this. I felt from then on that Poland’s true wealth was in its people. The recent flood of Polish labour to the west bears this out.

Over subsequent years I returned to Poland on many occasions, wanting to find out more about my ancestry thinking that the more I found out about my roots the more I would understand about myself, about my art.

1996 was the key year. For years I was desperate to somehow respond to this existence of family, relatives, ancestors, to the hundreds of names I unearthed whilst compiling the family tree from the records of the parish church nearby. I liked knowing that I had a link to the past and that I hadn’t just appeared in Manchester from nowhere.

I spent the summer of 1996 planning a sculptural response, researching, filming and photographing in the village.

)HHOLQJ ORRNLQJ ZDWFKLQJ VHDUFKLQJ IRU VRPHRQH IURP ORQJ DJR

ROBERT KOENIG FILMING IN DOMINIKOWICE IN 1996. IN 2004 ROBERT BOUGHT THE FIELD HE WAS STANDING ON IN THIS PHOTOGRAPH. HE IS IN THE PROCESS OF PLANTING ONE HUNDRED TREES ON THE FIELD WHERE HE WILL ONE DAY BUILD A HOUSE. PHOTO : BARBARA KĂ–NIG

20

GORLICE, DWÓR KARWACJANÓW GALLERY, POLAND – 1997 It is difficult to know where ideas come from but the plan emerged to carve a crowd of tall people who would represent those ancestors on the family tree, people with names but no faces. They couldn’t therefore be portraits but by carving the figures in the village, from local trees, perhaps some likenesses would emerge from amongst the many villagers, relatives coming to see me work. I planned to carve around 16 tall men followed, at a later stage, by 16 tall women. I thought 32 figures would constitute a good crowd.

I acquired the first batch of trees from Edzio Pietrusza. All the trees grew near my mother’s farm.

AS PART OF THE DOCUMENTATION OF THE PROJECT, EDZIO PIETRUSZA AGREED TO POSE FOR A PHOTOGRAPH BUT INSISTED ON BRINGING OUT HIS FAVOURITE HOLY PICTURE.

21

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY I returned to Dominikowice in the autumn and winter of that year to start carving the first trees. Over the years the conditions under which I had to carve the Odyssey figures were rarely comfortable. The Salisbury Cathedral figure was carved during a cold January in 2008, with the early morning fog drifting in through the cloisters. Things were no different in 1996. The winter snow arrives early in Dominikowice and stays for months, often creating 2 metre high snowdrifts. But it was still a magical time in a magical place.

Part of that magic was due to the fact that I had met my future wife in the village during that summer. She had returned to the village to stay with her grandfather for a few weeks during that winter and kept me company during those long arduous days carving the trees.

We got married the following year and we spent another summer in the village where I carved the next group of figures. By this time the municipal art gallery in the nearby town CARVING THE FIRST LIME TREES IN NOVEMBER 1996.

of Gorlice had heard about the project and invited me to show the carvings in the gallery. I was remembering my deceased ancestors through these carvings so I chose the month of November as the exhibition date as that is the month when traditionally people remember the dead and visit the family graves. The ceremony in the cemetery on All Souls Day is pure theatre and a moving spectacle. All the graves are adorned and full of candles and the cemetery is packed with people. After the religious ceremony, involving blessing the graves, the people stay on, tending their family graves. The place is busy till very late. The air is warm from the candles that light up the whole cemetery. The cemetery is on a hill and as you leave to go home in the dark you can see a wondrous glow above the graves that stays until the early hours of the morning. A place full of the dead is alive for that one special evening.

MOTHER ARRIVES FROM MANCHESTER ESCORTED BY AUNT WISIA. PHOTO: BARBARA KÖNIG

22

GORLICE, DWÓR KARWACJANÓW GALLERY, POLAND – 1997 We returned to Poland in November for the exhibition. I had invited my mother to come from Manchester to be my guest of honour at the opening. I realise now that it was asking a lot of her to come to the village in the cold and uncomfortable winter period.

The opening of the exhibition was a special affair. I invited all the relatives from the village to the exhibition. The Odyssey project was partly about them too. Many came, huddled from the cold. Some had walked all the way from the village to the town to see the show.

23

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY The week before the exhibition I went around the houses in the village looking for old photographs that the relatives might have had. I unearthed some interesting archive photographs that helped tell the story of the village going back to the 1930’s. Aunt Wisia had my mother’s original German identity card photograph. She also had a tremendous memory for facts. She dated one group photograph of pilgrims to a local shrine by saying: “Maryśka in the photograph doesn’t have any breasts yet so it must have been taken before the war”. All these images were photocopied and enlarged and the captions were provided by the relatives themselves. They were all put on display on one large wall in the exhibition.

Their past was made public. Over the years I got the impression that communism made people more secretive. It was not a good thing for people to know too much about you.

Very often whenever I would seek information, people either didn’t know or didn’t have the photographs. It was difficult for them to break the habit of not revealing too much.

The visual information on the gallery wall made some of them feel uncomfortable. And yet, to me, it was a celebration of a community. The opening was a success nevertheless with relatives from the town and the village meeting up on a rare occasion. My mother, who was taken by the Nazis to the labour camps during the war at the age of 20, was the guest of honour at the exhibition, surrounded by family and applauded by dignitaries including the mayor of Gorlice.

ROBERT KOENIG

GIVING A TALK TO A SCHOOL GROUP DURING THE ODYSSEY EXHIBITION IN THE DWÓR KARWACJANÓW GALLERY IN GORLICE IN 1997.

24

Tarnow, Poland – 1998

Odyssey was conceived as a personal project with no plans for exhibiting the carvings anywhere. A group of 16 figures were carved in 1996/97 in Dominikowice village. By word of mouth the municipal gallery in the nearby town of Gorlice heard about the project and invited me to show the work in the Autumn of 1997. News had spread further and the art centre in the town of TarnĂłw asked for the carvings to be shown in and around the old town

25

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY in the following year 1998. This Tarnów exhibition was a major departure for the Odyssey figures as they were to leave the area where they were created. They were conceived to bear witness to places and events relevant to my family history in and around Dominikowice.

Tarnów wanted Odyssey to do the same in their town, to remember past events from their history. Odyssey was a private project in Dominikowice. The exhibition in Tarnów turned it into a public journey. Because of the gathering interest from various venues I decided, where possible, that I would choose places that would in some way follow my mother’s

THE GRAND STAIRS, TARNÓW OLD TOWN 1998

26

TARNOW, POLAND –1998

journey from Poland to the United Kingdom and also to the journey of my sculptor uncle Jan Dudek. I would place the carvings for short periods around the towns, to be visible, to bear witness to other people’s experiences, to remember.

We did this in Tarnów in 1998. I chose a day to take the carvings around the town with the help of the stage hands of the Tarnów theatre. We also filmed the event and took photographs in each location.

27

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY This whole event was an education for me. People started appearing wanting to tell me their stories, among them an Auschwitz survivor and a World War Two partisan. I found out many things. This was not just a sculpture exhibition.

I came across a World War Two monument next to the old Jewish baths. It took me by surprise. It was a monument to the very first transport of prisoners to the newly built German concentration camp in Auschwitz. The plaque read:

“

728 Poles were collected from the various Gestapo prisons in the region and brought to this

”

point and then transported to the German concentration camp in Auschwitz.

Just as a person would stand in silence by a place like this, read the inscription and remember, I placed some of my figures to do the same. This was to be their role from now on. I wondered about these 728 people. Were they still alive? Would I find the prisoner with no. 1 tattooed on the arm amongst this group? I was told that one of the prisoners from this group was still alive and living in Tarnów. We arranged an interview with him for the film documentary we were creating about the Odyssey project.

This is part of the interview: “On 13 June 1940 in the afternoon, from the Tarnow prison they started to transfer all the prisoners to the Jewish baths. We stayed there until 5am on the 14th. Then everyone was thrown out, arranged in lines of five and marched to the train station. The railway wagons were waiting. We didn’t know where we were going at first, maybe to work somewhere.

There were 728 of us. We had already heard that Paris had fallen. We went through Auschwitz station and on to a side line which led to the Tobacco Monopoly building .We approached this building, which was surrounded by barbed wire. There were sentry towers with SS guards with machine guns. They threw us out of the wagons and placed us in the square. When they were throwing us out naturally we were kicked and beaten. There were 30 German criminals brought in. Lagerfuhrer Fritsch was to speak to us. The speech went like this: “You have come here not to a sanatorium but to a German concentration camp from which there is no escape other than through a chimney. If there are Jews in this convoy you have the right to live no more than 2 weeks, priests 1 month, the rest of you 3 months. Those who manage to live longer are thieves and sooner or later will get their punishment. They must die.” There were tables at which everybody had to give their personal details. Here everybody was given a number. My number was 311.

28

TARNOW, POLAND –1998

The “Bima” is the only remnant of the magnificent “Old” Synagogue of Tarnów destroyed by the Germans on 11 November 1939.

After the War people started to clear the rubble from what was once the Synagogue.

Underneath this destruction they found that the Bima was still standing. This site is protected and concerts are held here. I remember attending just such an event after the opening of my exhibition in 2004.

29

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

THE SQUARE IN THE OLD TOWN, TARNÓW.

30

Lwów, Ukraine – 2004

31

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

‘Galician Odyssey’ In the summer of 2004 the sculptor Robert Koenig took his sculpture project “Odyssey” on a journey across the historical region of Galicia in South East Poland and the Ukraine following a route linked to his ancestors, the Dudek family.

The tour involved exhibitions in Lwów in the Ukraine and Tarnów, Zakopane, Kraków, Gorlice in Poland. It also involved a private visit by the artist to the town of Przemyślany, east of Lwów.

(When in 1793 the AustroHungarian Empire invaded and

The British documentary filmmaker Stephen Matthews followed Robert Koenig during his

annexed South East Poland the

Galician Odyssey, filming his experiences and his attempts to uncover a family history

resulting province was named

unknown or forgotten, a 20 century history of this region of Europe.

Galicia. When Poland regained its independence in 1918 Galicia

23 carved limewood figures left Dominikowice, near Gorlice at the beginning of May

became Polish once again with the

2004 heading for Lwów, in Western Ukraine. The exhibition, hosted by the ‘Lwowskie

mighty cities of Krakow in the west

Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sztuk Pięknych’, was installed in the Palace of Art courtyard next to

and Lwów in the east).

the Potocki Palace. The carvings were thus visible from the street.

32

LWÓW, UKRAINE – 2004 Following in the footsteps of the artist’s uncle, the sculptor Jan Dudek, ‘Dziady’ arrived in a city where he also left his mark having, amongst other things, contributed to carvings made for the Cathedral of St. Jura in the City.

Through this spiritual journey Koenig was to make further attempts to uncover the life and work of Jan Dudek in the 1920’s in this part of Galicia and to understand the history of this troubled region.

During the 2 weeks of the exhibition one day was chosen to take 13 of the carved figures around the city of Lwów, to bring them into direct contact with the public by arranging them for short periods on street corners and squares. They were then photographed and filmed with the artist responding to questions posed by the public.

I went to Przemyślany to search for the grave of my sculptor uncle Jan Dudek. Before I set off I had the paragraph from my mother’s autobiography in my mind:

“

I loved my brother Jan. For me he was a handsome noble man and worked away as an artist

sculptor. I used to love it when he came home for Christmas and brought me nice presents. I remember when he said to my dad. “Don’t worry Father about Maria, I will take care of her and will give her a good education”. I was so happy about it. I used to look up to my brother Jan. He had many hobbies, which included skiing, photography, and he loved playing his music. He belonged to many societies. He entertained many people when he played his violin. I used to sit endlessly listening to him play. I remember when he came home for Christmas and we had a family reunion party. Jan played the violin while everybody danced, then he would suddenly change to a sad melody, then he would apologise saying, “I am sorry, it just came into my head”. He would then continue to play dance music. One day whilst coming back from a skiing competition he was caught up in a blizzard and an avalanche covered his train. For two days he was trapped in the train. Fortunately he was rescued but ever since the accident he complained of bad headaches. This went on for a few months until the headaches got worse and he was admitted to hospital where he later died of meningitis. He was 24 years of age. He had a large beautiful funeral, which was attended by many people from all his working connections. He was very well known and because of this the flag in the City was lowered to half-mast. A statue was erected by his grave. They said: “Our star of the East, which shone over us, has been extinguished.”

”

His premonition of a short life came true. For me my life was even sadder.

MARIA KÖNIG

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

IN SEARCH OF JAN DUDEK Most of us, to some extent, remember the stories we were told as children – fragments of fictional tales designed to engender good behaviour, or simply fuel our imaginations. For Robert Koenig, growing up in the suburbs of Manchester, the stories were all too real – rich tales of his mother’s childhood in south-east Poland, full of community and characters, superseded as he grew older by the altogether darker narrative of her wartime removal to Germany, the hell of the labour camps and her eventual arrival in the UK. For Koenig, the stories stuck, creating a desire to learn more, to see the country of his ancestors and to come to terms with his family history.

As a young man in the 1970s, he endured lengthy coach rides and the privations of communist Poland to rebuild the bond with his greater family. As his knowledge of that country grew, so did his realisation that he was shaped more deeply by his past : a sculpting contemporary of Anthony Gormley at London’s prestigious Slade School of Art, Koenig suffered for his instinctive – and unfashionable – decision to work in wood, a form which he was now to appreciate as a distinctly Polish tradition.

As he matured, Koenig sought his defining project and so in 1997 began carving a series of greater-than-life-size figures, initially called ‘Dziady’, the Polish name of a ceremony celebrating the memory of deceased ancestors, but since renamed ‘Odyssey’ for what has become an international audience. A mass of figures to represent the ancestors he never met, they are ‘monumental’, although rather than crying out for attention, they appeal to the viewer on a more intimate, empathetic level, often inspiring strong emotions from those who come into contact with them.

‘Odyssey’ finally arrived in the UK in 2006 and was honoured by the Brighton Festival Fringe in that year. At the sculptors request they are currently touring unconventional venues – including a series of churches and cathedrals - in the UK, reaching out to ‘ordinary’ people rather than being cosseted in a gallery.

STEVEN MATTHEWS, FILMMAKER.

Lwów - The guide books say: – Lviv is different than any other cities in the world. Its area of 120 ha embraces over a thousand sights of historic value, 200 of which are architectural masterpieces known worldwide. In 1998 the old Lviv entered on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List. It is a city of three cathedrals: Armenian, Uniate and Latin one. The Latin Cathedral is one of the most precious Gothic places, the Armenian Cathedral enraptures with its beauty, and the St. George’s Cathedral located on a high hill is overlooking the city.

34

LWÓW, UKRAINE – 2004

12 May 2004 When we arrived in Lwów we were taken to a dingy flat in a tower block in the suburbs. The lift looked just like a hole in the wall and quite frightening to walk in. The other abiding memory was the balcony to the flat. The workmanship was so poor you wondered why it hadn’t collapsed soon after being built. We spent one night there and were determined to find alternative accommodation the following morning. There was a lot of hustling on street corners phoning around looking for a hotel room. The hospitality was mixed. The person who should have greeted us at the bus station did not arrive but a Ukrainian driver not only let us use his mobile phone but as we couldn’t get through to our host he drove us into town to a pre-arranged meeting place on the top floor of a building that housed the Polish arts organisation. A ground floor tenant refused to help us insisting aggressively that just because we couldn’t speak Ukrainian she shouldn’t be expected to try to understand my Polish. We found a double room at the Hotel Lwów at the back of the Opera house in the centre of town for $16 a night.

Hotel Lwów was appalling. Terrible rooms, dirty; water came on from 6pm for a few hours only and for a short time early in the morning. Toilet paper was also rationed. It was a stressful first few days and I felt it was going to be a long 2 weeks trying to put on this exhibition here in the Ukraine where even the British Council feared to tread (I asked them for help and advice on the trip). Our Polish contact was crucial but his phone wasn’t working and when it eventually was he explained that he didn’t always answer because people kept phoning him?! My Polish mobile phone was fast running out of call time. Our second day was spent waiting for the lorry to arrive from Poland with the carvings but there were major problems with the documentation on the border. We weren’t sure if the exhibition would take place at all. The day developed dramatically with a flurry of messages from the driver on the border and visits to the local customs office. I sent a text message to my art gallery contact in Poland who, I believe, phoned the Ministry in Warsaw. There was a last ditch effort when a meeting was organised between the customs director and the Polish consul in Lwów around 5pm. We got permission for the driver to cross the border as a favour from the Ukrainian authorities. The plan was for the driver to park outside the Polish consulate overnight and unload the carvings in the morning.

35

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

Friday 14 May With all the stress and the waiting on street corners all day I woke up with a terrible sore throat and I was fast losing my voice. There were still frantic text messages flying around all night, with little effect, and all the time my mobile call time was fast disappearing. The following morning we headed for the Palace of Art, a grand modern municipal art gallery, which was the venue for the Odyssey carvings. The main aim was to film the movement of

36

LWÓW, UKRAINE – 2004 the Odyssey figures around Lwów over the 2 weeks. We therefore installed ourselves on the pavement outside the gallery, camera ready, and waited and waited for this grand arrival of the lorry from Poland. We waited for 3 hours in the cold. Frozen and hungry we went to the Kupol Polish restaurant for a break. We had a wonderful lunch of barszcz (beetroot soup) and chicken breast to follow all for £6 for two. When we got back to the pavement outside the Palace of Art our Lwów contact was waiting there but the lorry still hadn’t arrived. They couldn’t find him. I finally gave them 50hrn. to get a taxi to look for him. It was now 2pm on a Friday. If he doesn’t arrive by 5pm we may have to wait until Monday to get the documents from the consul, have the customs open the transport before we could take delivery of the sculptures and unload the transport and send the lorry back to Poland.

It was another whole day spent hanging around on a cold pavement. The transport was eventually found on a parking lot. They hadn’t looked hard enough to find him the first time around. I was a little too keen to help the lorry through the narrow iron gates to the gallery and put my hand in a place it shouldn’t be. I smashed my hand against the gate It bled profusely at first but no lasting damage was done. The unloading went well and the carved figures looked impressive. I paid the driver the agreed cost of the transport with an extra 100 Polish złoty for the bribes he had to pay on the border. Apparently various border guards demanded payment for certificates, which were not necessary. The driver also went through a stop sign and was fined 37hrn. He was let off with a 10hrn fine as that is all he had. The day had ended well and we had wine and poppy seed cake with our contacts in the art group headquarters on Rylejewa Street.

Saturday 15 May My voice was very weak and sore this morning and I had an interview on Polish radio Lwów to do. The Polish radio programme was allowed to broadcast one day a week, between 9-12 in the morning but had around 100,000 listeners in the area. Despite my weak voice the interview went well. Back at the art group headquarters I met some local artists and a coach tour from the Polish border town of Przemyśl. They took me with them on a trip around the city including the Lyczakowski cemetery where many famous Poles were buried.

Sunday 16 May The Ukraine had just won the Eurovision Song Contest. We managed to watch some of it on the small b/w television in the hotel room. I attended Sunday mass at the Polish Metropolitan Basilica at 11am. It was a wonderful spiritual experience. This historic basilica is so rich in baroque detail and so vast it felt like being in an historical painting. The place was of course packed with Poles. I was reminded of something a Ukrainian TV reporter told me outside the exhibition: “A lot of Polishness in Lwow but so few Poles”. Those who survived the ethnic cleansing after the Second World War and stayed seemed to be in this Basilica on that Sunday. The private View at the Palace of Art took place later that day. It was a positive experience. The Polish Consul gave one of the speeches. The Polish community came to an event that talked about heritage, belonging, displacement and

37

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY migration, themes that were familiar to them. I ended the day with a visit to the Polish theatre for a performance of the Różewicz play “Kartoteka”.

Monday 17 May Spent the day looking around the city for sites suitable for filming. I had planned to take a small group of figures to various key locations for short periods around the centre of the city to film, photograph and generally be visible. This was a regular event for the Odyssey figures in various towns and cities. The figures were meant to “bear witness” to past events and to follow a trail loosely based around family history. My uncle, the sculptor Jan Dudek lived and worked in this area, helping to provide carved artefacts for places such as the Cathedral of Saint Jura in Lwów. This place was on my itinerary. I had lunch at my favourite restaurant the Kupol where I asked the owner for permission to film an interview there. I also asked her for the recipe for her red barszcz soup (there is also a white barszcz). This soup varies in consistency. The Kupol version had a lot more vegetables and was therefore thicker. But what stands out is the rich taste. (I am a geat fan of Polish soups. I remember a visit to the grimy mining town of Swiętochłowice in Polish Silesia in 1975 trying to find my father’s family for the first time. He had died 11 years previously. I spent a few days with these relatives , most of whom worked in the mining industry, and still remember the soups that were served. There were many and all different and tasty.)The Kupol has a fascinating interior using pre-war furniture and old photographs. It is like eating in a grand private house. I later arranged for permission to film Holy Mass from the grand pulpit of the Polish basilica on Sunday. The rest of the day was frustrating in terms of trying to contact anybody. The telephones weren’t working.

Tuesday 18 May I had a bad night and woke with a bad chest but when you see the morning sun glistening on the ancient cobbles of this fairy tale like medieval old town you can get used to any discomfort. The petrol fumes though are terrible. Our contact arrived at 8am. He managed to have the phone fixed in the hotel room. We had contact with the outside world. We started to plan our day of action, taking the carvings around the old town for one day.

The lorry and driver was to cost around £2 per hour. We walked a lot that day, first to the Academy of Fine Arts where our contact was a professor of ceramics then on to the Polish consulate for more documents. The visa section was under siege by people wanting visas to Poland.

Wednesday 19 May Aside from the usual meetings I spent some time trying to contact a local artist whose paintings were on show at the Palace of Art. Not easy to do. I later came across a fascinating museum in a disused church showing the extraordinary carvings of the mid 18th Century sculptor Johann Georg Pinzel. He was an early representative of the so called

38

LWÓW, UKRAINE – 2004 Lwów school of baroque sculpture. Figures of a crucified Christ, often separated from their crosses, severely damaged, with missing limbs, frequently headless and bearing axe marks were discovered in undergrowth near the belltowers and chapels, in wayside shrines and roofs of churches which were closed during communism. Between 1962 -80 employees of the Gallery of Art in Lwów saved many of these carvings during expeditions throughout Ukrainian Galicia, Wołyń and Podole. This was definitely a must see exhibition especially for wood sculptors using the traditional tools of mallet and chisel. I later came across this text which places Pinzel’s art into context: Lwow rococo sculpture describes a thoroughly original school of sculpture which appears in Lwow around the middle of the 18th century when the town was still buoyant economically.

There is an exceptional cultural/religious climate with great influences of Spanish mysticism.

Lwow sculpture is impregnated with mysticism. It is visible in a kind of formal abstraction, complex geometric shapes, dry and intricate planes with sharp edges. Creators such as Antoni Osinski (1720 – 65) and after him Sebastian Fesinger and Jerzy Pinzel. Decorations in the Cathedral of St Jura in Lwow have such work.

In 1764 there was a collective ennoblement of the greatest of those sculptors. The work of the sculptor was officially deemed to be the work of the intellect and not just a craft. In far off Lwow, lying on the edge of Latin culture, the final words were uttered in the realm of European rococo sculpture.

Thursday 20 May My contact arrived at 8.30 am and we went searching for lorries to hire. We found our man on a street where owners of trucks and vans parked waiting for clients. The weather was overcast so we weren’t sure of Friday’s day of action. We kept our options open. I wandered off later looking for more potential sites to take the carved figures. All the walking was tiring but it was difficult to take a break in the hotel room as during the day there was no water. You couldn’t use the toilet or wash your hands. I had sausage and scrambled eggs in the hotel cafe, which left me a little vulnerable to a toilet with no water. I managed to arrange to meet Ludmilla Davidenko, the artist showing her paintings in the Palace of Art. I bought 3 abstract paintings off her for £40 each. The joy on her face was overwhelming.

It reminded me of how difficult it is sometimes to sell any artwork either in the UK or in the Ukraine.

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THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. JURA

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Friday 21 May It was a sunny day. I hired the lorry and a group of art students to take 11 figures around the town and a Russian photographer to document the day. We stood the figures on street corners, the square in the Old Town, by churches. A crucial location was outside the historic Cathedral of St Jura. Ever since my childhood I was told that Uncle Jan the sculptor “had carved the Last Supper scene on the gold leafed holy gates inside the cathedral”. I never knew if this place ever existed and for decades I had planned to come to find out. During communism this was too difficult to do. Foreign visitors were strictly controlled. Here was my chance to pay my respects to my uncle by bringing my carvings to the site where he also left his in the 1920’s when Lwów was still a part of Poland. It took a lot of persuasion to get the church authorities to allow the figures to enter the courtyard. This was a problem I also came across in Poland and Germany. Quite rightly I think the guardians of these spiritual places wanted to be sure that appropriate respect is given to the place. We spent about 30 minutes in each location. It gave the public a chance to experience the sculptures and their meaning. Many people came to talk, in a variety of languages, discussing a variety of issues. This was also the point, to bring the carvings out to meet the people.

Saturday 22 May At 10.30am we arranged to film an interview with a Polish journalist and an artist at the Kupol restaurant discussing life in Lwów.

ROBERT. What do you think of Odyssey coming here?

IRENA. First of all I think it was a great event for Lwow, your exhibition here…very symbolic…the figures of your ancestors are following you here to Lwow, very symbolic. I think it was necessary, the idea itself is great.

ROBERT. Would you like to do something similar?

IRENA. It is a very expensive undertaking. It is just a dream. An artist should do things like this. I would love to go to Paris or Italy but someone would have to invite me because it is too difficult for me otherwise.

BOZENA. Nobody has ever had an exhibition like this. It was astonishing and beautiful for people. It was such an important moment because Europe was entering Lwow. It came out of Lwow, hooked on to Europe and came back to Lwow. That is beautiful. This exhibition can be compared to the Mitoraj exhibition in Krakow and Warsaw where the exhibits were in contact with people, as if they entered the city – it is good fortune for the city and on such a high level. People mix with the figures, walk amongst them, touch them. It is beautiful. A beautiful project, paying respect to the ancestors.

ROBERT. What do you think of the future of the Ukraine, of the Poles who live here? Would you like to leave and if so where? Does Galicia have any meaning?

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY IRENA. I have my roots here. I would like to travel but would always come back. I don’t want to leave but I want Europe to return to us and for Lwow’s magnificence to return. I don’t want us to be the bastards of Europe. We are from here. When Galicia existed Lwow was more important than Krakow so why should we want to leave? We don’t want to. Let it be the Ukraine but let her be in Europe. Let Lwow look a bit different. I am not saying that its former glory will return. In comparison with Kiev where there are great investments, Lwow still waits for investors instead of doing something itself. I don’t want to leave but let Europe return to us.

Maybe I’m wrong but maybe it is all political to allow Lwow to fall become dilapidated.

Streets are falling apart. Everything is waiting to be renovated.

BOZENA. They wanted to prove that everything that happened outside of the Soviet Empire was bad. Even in the 1940’s the first Ukrainian Theatre Company was in Lwow and not in Kiev. You were not allowed to talk about it.

(Talk about Russians taking over Polish apartments after the second world war. They did not respect or appreciate the objects left behind, the cultural heritage, they just steadily took things out of the apartments to sell them off cheaply for easy money. Now their grandchildren are there and are gradually causing the destruction of this cultural inheritance. I know a Polish friend who lives in just such a building and observes how these Russian inhabitants are alcoholics and drug addicts and are selling off all that was left behind.)

Sunday 23 May It is a sunny morning today. The centre of town is always off limits to traffic on a Sunday.

We did some filming next to the Arsenal first thing but then went off to the Polish Cathedral for 11am Mass with the Cardinal of Lwów taking the service. It was another moving spiritual experience for me. The Cathedral was packed with people. I stood near the altar throughout the service. Steve was filming from the raised baroque pulpit. The cathedral witnessed many significant events and was visited by several Polish kings, most notably John II Casimir (1609-1672), who in the Cathedral entrusted the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the care of the Blessed Virgin in what came to be known as the Lwów Oath. Attending Mass here you get a tremendous feeling of history, of belonging, of being a part of a tradition going back 700 years. There is also a great sense of community.

I remember the great floods in Poland in 1997 whilst carving the Odyssey figures in Dominikowice village. The rain was continuous, raining steadily day and night. There was great despair. We heard of one man jumping into a swollen river after seeing his house and livelihood swept away. I remember a special Mass being held in the parish church, which had been said in times of war, famine, floods and epidemics for hundreds of years.

The same service attended by people suffering the same shared hardships but hundreds of years apart. It is that wonderful feeling of community and continuity throughout the

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LWÓW, UKRAINE – 2004 ages. After the service we had our most expensive Sunday lunch at the exclusive Amadeus restaurant for £13 per head. We walked past the monument to the great Ukrainian poet Shevchenko whose poetry contributed greatly to the growth of Ukrainian national consciousness. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising in retrospect for us to come across a nationalist rally around the monument with people giving speeches, holding banners and young people marching past and singing nationalist songs. It wasn’t easy to film the event as the security looked on suspiciously. Back to the mundane – we returned to the hotel. On each floor a caretaker kept an eye on things from her room. She earned her tips by offering to make tea for the guests and supply the rooms with toilet paper, 10ft of paper each day (we measured).

Monday 24 May Today we were going to Przemyślany, a town to the south east of Lwów. This was my Holy Grail. For decades I had wanted to go there. This was the place where my uncle Jan had come to find work straight after gaining his sculpture diploma from the art college in Zakopane in the Polish Tatra Mountains in the 1920’s.

I had heard a lot about him from my mother. He was the older brother who used to return from school in the mountains to spend the summer back home in Dominikowice. She used to observe him carving with her nose barely reaching the top of his workbench. She told me how similar in character I was to him, with similar interests, both being sculptors and self taught musicians. I remember studying for my degree in sculpture in Brighton in the 1970’s, working on my wood constructions and, heaven forbid, woodcarvings at a very intuitive level at a time when the fashion in sculpture was for other materials and styles,

PRZEMYSLANY PARISH CHURCH

wondering if there was a sculptural gene in the family that propelled me to work in such an unfashionable medium and style. A trip to Poland in the winter of 1974/75 was promising.

It showed a much deeper wood tradition than was visible in England. But a trip to the Ukraine in those dark days of communism for an Englishman was out of reach. Jan had found work as a sculptor at the Wojtowicz workshops in the town of Przemyślany, which before the Second World War was a part of Poland. These workshops provided carved altars, pulpits, confessionals and a variety of other church furniture for towns and cities in the region, including Lwów. They employed many craftsmen and artists. The owner was a great benefactor in the town, becoming the mayor, building the post office and other buildings for the town. The great tragedy was that Jan died tragically from meningitis in 1929 at the age of 24. I saw in him this sculptural gene that was passed on to me. I understood why my work was described as not British. I was responding to a call from within when I carved and painted my wood sculptures. The trip to Przemyślany was to find Jan’s grave, to pay my respects to a fellow sculptor and to get to know the environment in which he worked.

It was a rainy day in Lwów. We planned to set off early, which meant washing in freezing water at 6.45 as the hot water was turned on at 7am. We found a young man called Andrei

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THE ART CLASS IN ZAKOPANE IN THE 1920’S

who was willing to take us to Przemyślany in a car bought by his parents who were working abroad. It rained all the way. I was already in a bit of a trance. This was another spiritual experience for me. I had been dreaming for years about finally finding Jan in the cemetery and laying a stone on his grave. He was a well loved person in the town and when he died they apparently raised a statue to his memory saying “Our star in the east , who shone over us, has been extinguished”. It is a phrase I had heard repeated many times by my mother and one that she had heard from her father many times. We arrived in Przemyślany and headed straight to the Polish church where Jan would have attended Mass and where his funeral must have taken place. The current parish priest, Father Smołka, had heard I was to visit and was waiting for me inside the church. He was short in stature and full of energy and boyish enthusiasm. He reminded me of my father who was from the same part of Poland, the mining area of Silesia. This baroque church was still being renovated after decades of communism when God didn’t exist therefore churches were redundant. This church had a magnificent baroque interior but all the baroque altars and the church organ were destroyed and the place transformed into the Modul umbrella factory with heavy engineering lathes in the aisles and a low false ceiling. In 1996 Father Smołka managed to convince the highest authorities in the Ukraine to return the church to the Polish community. The umbrella factory director refused to leave until the community gave them $50,000 in order to relocate the factory. The money was raised and paid into the bank in March 1997. Father was rebuilding the church and the fragile Polish minority community despite many obstacles. All the churches were rebuilding, Orthodox as well as Catholic.

Father had a dispute with an Orthodox church which had in its possession a church bell that belonged to the Catholic Church. He also showed me a letter that was being circulated in the area, which showed the pressure he was under:

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From the community organisations and inhabitants of Przemyślany.

We the community organisations and inhabitants of Przemyślany are not happy about the Polish priest Piotr Smołka who is carrying on non religious activities mainly amongst Ukrainians who are not sure of their religious affiliations. He lures them with gifts of humanitarian aid, second hand goods, chewing gum and wants to force them into the Polish language. For instance in Przemyślany there are no Poles and yet Father Smołka found 50 people who consider themselves to be Polish. The priest is trying to convince them that they are Polish. Apart from that buildings that belonged to the Modul factory were sold to him as a citizen of Poland, four buildings with a total 2500 square metres of which 853.3 square metres were sold to him. On more than one occasion we asked the town authorities to check this sale, which they never did.

He travels around the whole district and looks for churches everywhere. Even there he wants to do the same things as in Przemyślany. For instance in Swirz he took photos of children and elderly people. He sent these photos to the Ukrainian government and to the newspaper “Voice of the Ukraine” saying these are Poles and they do not want to give back the church.

A simple check revealed that there are no Poles in Swirz and those few people were bribed by the priest, and they are not Polish.

In the village of Czemerzyńce he forced through a list of Poles and registered the Roman Catholic parish in the department of religious affairs and after inspection people refused to sign any papers and did not sign them. These people are Bronisław Szic, Broszka, Zaręba. Please inform us of the results of the inspection of the petition of the inhabitants of the village of Czemerzyńce if it is in accordance with the registration of the Roman Catholic community, which lays a claim to the church.

The community organisations and the inhabitants of Przemyślany demand that Father Smołka is prevented from staying in the town of Przemyślany and in the Ukraine at all. Do not give him a Ukrainian entry or exit visa, but somehow he is given permission and to this day he is still here. On more than one occasion the town authorities pointed out to Piotr Smołka his non religious activities, but he still carries on his work.

C.P.U NATIONAL UKRAINIAN MOVEMENT UKRAINIAN WOMEN’S ALLIANCE

I had just arrived for the 10am Mass. There was a small congregation of elderly Poles. As soon as I walked in the priest greeted me from the altar and said a prayer for Jan Dudek and my family. This was already overwhelming and took me by surprise. I had tears in my eyes. This was a deeply emotional day for me before I even left Lwów. After the Holy Mass the whole congregation sang a Polish song of greeting to me and then followed it with a Ukrainian version of the song. Truly moving. He introduced me to a parishioner who remembered The Wojtowicz family and the workshop. She promised to show me where the buildings were. When the Soviets invaded what was then Poland at the start of the Second World War many Poles fled to the west. A workshop providing fixtures and fittings for churches was not going to survive under communism. I found the house where the Wojtowicz family and the craftsmen all lived and the outbuildings where they must have worked. When they left everything was taken by the locals and the buildings taken over by the Soviets. We were taken to meet an 87 year old Orthodox nun, Maria who lived nearby and remembered living across the street from the Wojtowicz house. I told her of my quest

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to find the grave of my Uncle Jan who worked across the road from her house when she was little. She spoke so beautifully and gently about the spirits being present whenever they were talked about. A gentle breeze was blowing the net curtains and the subtle light through the window created an atmospheric glow in the room. I was convinced Jan was there with us in that room.

Sister Maria interview: ROBERT. Good Morning. I am from England. My uncle is buried here in Przemyslany…

SISTER MARIA. Is there a grave…?

There should be but I must find it…

Please sit down.

I lived opposite. They were very pleasant people, good God, what a long time ago it was. I remember Mr. Wojtowicz very well. I remember they always went to church together. Mr. Wojtowicz and his wife, arm in arm, like two barrels, ha, ha…I remember it all so well. He had a son, Zbyszek, the younger…I don’t remember what his name was.

My uncle Jan Dudek worked…

But there was also Mr. Wojtowicz’s brother

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LWÓW, UKRAINE – 2004 I have an article about him here…(Robert begins to read…)

I see them all so clearly. When the Soviets came they took them to the army straight away…Mr. Wojtowicz, Mrs. Wojtowicz, Danusia was their daughter… there was a Kornel…

(Robert continues reading the article…)

Which brother…? Kornel, yes, yes, Kornel. They weren’t taken away, they went voluntarily to the labour battalions. It’s as if I can see them now…

How did it happen that they suddenly left?

But they didn’t leave that suddenly. If the Soviets were here they would have been deported deep into Russia. They had the possibility of leaving here. Zbyszek married…..he became a widow…married Jula…(Talk about Zbyszek…)

His granddad was very wealthy. I was still small…Mr. Wojtowicz erected a buiding which was used as the post office…a second building… a private house…he built…

He had a very large and beautiful garden…he loved flowers and maintained his property well. You will never find anyone like him.

They were our friends, I remember it well.

Were there sculptors…?

There was a Simion whose house was next to ours. I always played on the piano and he always put an apple on the window sill for me…his wife Nadia called their son Kornel. Kornel , younger brother Zbigniew…

They left suddenly, nobody arrested them, legally, they had such a large fortune, they left for Poland. Their daughter Lola, the wife of Zbyszek was Jula…they were Volksdeutch, supposedly of German ancestry…that was Zbyszek…

There was a huge workshop where many employees worked, sculptors, painters…

But apart from that there was a building opposite where the workers lived…he built altars for churches. They were beautiful people. We got on very well with them…they visited each other. Jula left for Poland with Zbyszek…I used to correspond with Jula…

A descendant of the Wojtowicz lives in Krakow and is called Arthur. His father died last year…

What was his name?

(Prolonged unclear talk about the Wojtowicz clan…)

One of these workers was my uncle. He died in 1929 at the age of 23…

But why don’t you say something about yourself?

Well I am now Sister Maria. My surname - Laher. I am on my own now. I entered the convent in 1943 and I am 87 years old.

And yet I remember everything, as if I could see that beautiful garden with the dahlias, roses, because our window looked out on to the road. Mr. Wojtowicz’s house was by the path opposite. I even remember my professor from school Mr. Kwietkowski who taught Polish language and literature and who asked this question : please tell us which flowers grow in Mr. Wojtowicz’s garden?

I used to look at that beautiful garden daily with its flowers... and the order and tidiness there… I looked and admired the lovely

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flowers…I got up and couldn’t name one flower. Why couldn’t I name even one? The professor was very handsome and I was his favourite pupil and he wrote in the book “this pupil is not very observant”.

This is all that I can tell you. When they left…Jula’s brothers died in the partisans.

When they abandoned the workshops many things must have remained.

That Simion was a very loyal and honest man.

(Discussion as to whether it is possible to find any objects from the workshops around the town.)

The Wojtowicz couple were of a similar height and size, they walked to church together.

(Talk about Zbyszek and Jula…)

I also still remember Stefa, Mr. Wojtowicz’s sister. She worked in the courts.

(Sister Maria gives her address…)

Were there any sculptors who stayed on here?

There is nobody.

(More talk about Simion living next door…)

Those were times that never will be repeated, because God directs everything.

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LWÓW, UKRAINE – 2004 Imagine that I remember and see everything so clearly. I remember the garden…You will never find someone who looked after his property so well.

I’m sure all our friends and relatives can hear our conversation here because they can see and hear everything.

(She mentions various people, a neighbour…) …are also here.

When the Wojtowicz left did the workforce also leave and did they close down the workshops?

When the Poles left people looted…they looted the Holy Mother. During the Ukrainian holy day of the Holy Mother they looted.

The Russians looted.

People are people. With them there is neither friendship…when there is upheaval, war, and you can benefit then who wouldn’t take things. Like for instance wealthy people... intelligent… those that had a title…what are they called…help me someone… (she had difficulty finding the right word for such people who lived in the area) …they had a wonderful park. When the Soviets came they looted everything. After barely an hour there wasn’t even one shrub left, quite appalling. I remember Mr. Gorski, the owner was just about to leave and was still sitting in his room…he had the possibility of leaving…he even wanted to give me his piano… what did I want it for, I already had one… I taught his daughter to play…he was sitting on his chair and was about to leave and had to watch how those people who worked for him and were well off home owners themselves, he watched as one took out the sewing machine, another took out something else, all this before his eyes. Today I can’t even imagine such a scene… it just can’t enter my head… they ran away with their suitcase in hand.

We must just remember that there is such a time but it is not the end. Everyone thinks about it in such a way, that for instance when Ancient Rome was created then it was the end of the world, but it was only the end of Rome. God is eternal but only people keep changing. We must survive this time also. We must just remember one thing, that we must save our souls and reconcile ourselves with Jesus, our Lord because we are created to serve Him and love Him and help one another and fulfill His wishes, to believe in one God and obey the Holy Ghost, and everything else is of no importance. That is permanent, the world is permanent.

He is infinite. He renews Himself and people say it is the end of the world but the world will not end because God is eternal and everything is eternal.

Beautiful words.

Thank you for the conversation…

That is what I can remember well…

(More mumbling conversation…)

Mr. Wojtowicz built the Town Hall, the post office, so many houses…

Is there some house we can visit?

(Discussion on where to go and which buildings to visit…)

Thank you again for the conversation. I will write to the Wojtowicz family in Poland..

Thank you…

You’re welcome…

Leaving the house…

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I had lunch with the parish priest. I then spent 2 hours wandering around the cemetery, looking for Jan’s grave . We couldn’t find it, nor could we find the statue in his memory.

Many Polish graves were damaged, some tombs were broken into and the coffins inside were visible and also damaged. We were told stories of children being given money to scratch the names off some of the Polish gravestones. Looking at the dates on the graves in the Polish section I worked out in which area Jan could have been buried. I said a prayer for him and promised myself I would return one day with a plaque with his details on, which I would place in the cemetery or the church. We returned to the church for tea with Father Smołka. He gave us lots of humble gifts and insisted on photos with me as a souvenir. I left him a donation for Holy Mass to be said for Uncle Jan and wrote in the Parish visitors book: “Please consider me a parishioner of this Church”. The whole day was a strange, magical experience. The behavior of this priest was so extraordinary, warm and unexpected. When I returned to Lwów that evening I was convinced that Jan was there with me all day. I could feel his presence around this priest, the extraordinary Father Smołka.

A few days after I returned from the Ukraine my mother in England told me that Jan had appeared to her at night, dressed in white. She was so pleased to see him and begged him to stay longer. He said he couldn’t because he was expecting a visitor. This happened just

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LWÓW, UKRAINE – 2004 as I was about to leave for Przemyślany. Mother had regular experiences of spirits coming to visit. During one period around the time I was in Poland with Odyssey she was regularly woken by something rocking the cups hanging on hooks in the kitchen and making a rattling sound. When she told me, after my return from the Ukraine, that her brother Jan paid her a visit, I believed her straight away.

Tuesday 25 May A hectic morning. Tradition was that I personally thank the gallery director for allowing me to show my carvings at his venue and that I give him a bottle of brandy. He said it wasn’t necessary but put the bottle in the cabinet with all the other bottles of gratitude. I took the 3 paintings I had bought at the Palace of Art to the photographers. I needed photos to take to the customs office in order to get an export licence for art objects. Yet more expenditure. I had been paying out for all sorts of things from the day I had arrived. Apart from the photographer I need to pay for the export licence. The tradition was that I also give the customs officer a box of chocolates and my exhibition catalogue. This was done in a very subtle and elegant way. The woman neither refused nor accepted this gift but it was received in a very courteous way.

The Odyssey carvings were exhibited just inside the railings of the Palace of Art. It was a good place because they were visible and accessible to the public 24 hours a day. Street art in a sense. Unfortunately this space was booked for a trade fair with all manner of stands waiting to be set up. For the last three days of my stay in Lwów the carvings needed to be pushed up into a corner and out of the way. This is part of the Odyssey story. The figures have had a rough ride on the backs of trucks, have stood on street corners and town squares. They have witnessed stories of hardship, migration, persecution, of migrants marginalised, not noticed. They have attracted people with personal grievances. When people ask me why they are piled on top of each other in lorries during their journeys and not cosseted in bubble-wrap boxes I remind them of these universal themes. If part of the Odyssey journey follows my mother’s route to the Nazi slave labour camps and she was herded into cattle trucks with little food and water, standing for days, why should the Odyssey figures have an easy ride. There will come a point when they will be too bruised for this kind of travel but until that happens...

Wednesday 26 May I bought my return ticket by bus to Poland. I leave on Saturday, picked up my paintings from the customs office and dropped in on the Wytwicki exhibition in the square of the Old Town. Janusz Wytwicki was a Polish architect and art historian. The exhibition showed his great work, a model of the panorama of Old Lwów. When the Soviets took over Lwów he had plans to take the model back to Poland. He finally got permission from the highest authorities in Moscow. Representatives of the Ukrainian Academy of Science were against this and hoped to be able to keep the work in the Ukraine. Janusz Wytwicki was murdered

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY by unknown perpetrators (possibly NKVD agents) on July 16, 1946. I got a call from Lwów Television who wanted to film a news item about the Odyssey exhibition for the next day.

There followed a long walk to the Polish Consulate to pay yet more money for “formalities” as the saying goes, 358uah to be exact. I developed a theory that if something is free here it costs 358uah, if it is for nothing it will cost a little less than 358uah. Another thing I noticed is that if you dare cross the road on a green light for pedestrians you risk getting your heels clipped by passing cars.

Thursday 27 May Steve went back to Przemyślany with Alexei to do more filming. I went to meet the man from the local Television at the exhibition site. The way the figures were pushed against the corner surrounded by tacky trade fare exhibits we both decided filming a feature was pointless. I was disappointed in the way the exhibition had been discarded so quickly and unceremoniously. I could also see a problem getting the lorry in to load the carvings tomorrow. I wandered around the town and found an internet cafe where I could check my emails. Aside from 80 spam messages I found an email from the British Council who told me they were unable to help me in any way with my exhibition in the Ukraine, a day before the carvings were due to be taken back over the border to Poland. I needed to wind down and find some space for myself. A visit to the magnificent Pinzel Museum again did it for me. His monumental carved wood figures have such a presence despite being badly damaged in parts. I spoke with the wife of my contact. Despite being a professor at the Fine Art Academy the salary was so low that you either had money to pay the rent or buy food.

You couldn’t do both. To get on you must do something on the side or something illegal.

Those who are honest therefore have a dilemma.

Friday 28 May It was the day the lorry was to take away the sculptures. I feared a repeat of the trials and tribulations of the first day, which made me ill I remember. I was not wrong. We had arranged to meet at the exhibition venue at 7am to give us enough time to load up before the trade fair traffic started to arrive. The lorry arrived at 8.45am. The driver had overslept!

There was nobody to help load the carvings and trade fair lorries were causing added stress. I eventually managed to load the carvings with the help of the driver. It was the responsibility of my contact to prepare the necessary documents to take the work back over the border. The lorry driver looked at the documents and felt they were suspiciously light.

He nevertheless drove off to the Ukrainian-Polish border. Meanwhile we went to film a prearranged interview with two elderly Polish sisters who had many a tale to tell of Lwów under German and then Soviet occupation. They were the descendants of a French army officer in Napoleon’s army that marched on Moscow. Below is part of that interview:

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LWÓW, UKRAINE – 2004 “The War started on 1st September 1939 – I remember it as if it was yesterday. It was a beautiful sunny day. I was walking in town and we could see planes coming and they had Polish markings. Suddenly they started bombing the town. They had disguised the planes. Houses were falling down.The army is attacking Lwów and Lwów is trying to defend itself. There was no official war with the Russians so the town was preparing to defend itself from the Germans. The young people were building barricades up on the west side, expecting the Germans. They would rip up paving slabs and construct barricades to stop German tanks. Meanwhile on the 20th of September the Soviets were already here. They invaded Poland on the 17th and got to Lwów on the 20th supposedly to liberate us from the landowners and magnates When the Russians invaded they deported the Poles to Siberia and only a few survived. Then there were the Germans. They would shoot people without any excuse. They would take them out of the houses and shoot them. This mansion house, they got all the men out and shot them. Concentration camps...they were bent on destroying the Polish population. Then the Russians came after the War. It was not an army, it was just a mass of down and outs. They had small horses because the soldiers could reach the ground with their feet when they sat on them. A duvet across their shoulder tied with string. Some old fashioned guns from years ago. We watched it like a horror show.

The Russians occupied half of Poland. First there were the mass arrests. There was an arrest in every family. In our family it was my elder sister. She was a 22 year old student. They took her at the beginning of October. She didn’t know why she was arrested.

There was no trial. She returned in 1945 but only thanks to the Polish General Sikorski who struck a deal with Stalin. The deal was that all of the Polish political prisoners would be released so they could form an army to fight the Germans. She said she didn’t expect to be released. She was waiting for death and she was just a young girl. She ended up in Kazakhstan where she wheeled clay. They would ring for dinner but she would just lie down and sleep – she didn’t have the strength to eat. When she came back she was wearing the same pullover she had when she was arrested, no underclothes. In the labour camp she got some padded trousers. All her legs were covered in open wounds because she had no vitamins to heal her. Her hair was cut very short, like a boy.

In those camps there would also be women who were free but they were designated by the Russians to be prostitutes so would have some freedoms. And I think it was the prostitutes who took our sister in and washed and dressed her.”

RK. What was Lwów like before the War? “Lwów was a beautiful city. Houses were not houses but palaces. If they built a house they would make it beautiful. Every house was an architectural treasure. Every house was unique. All original designs, all different. There were artists, scientists, poets and patriots. Even small children had this in their hearts. The intelligentsia here – the level was higher than in Warsaw. The house opposite used to have the most beautiful tiles in the shape of fish scales and when the sun shone it used to shine like a fish tail.

As a child I used to admire this. What the Russians did was to take the tiles off, loaded them on to a lorry and took them away to Moscow. They replaced them with sheet metal.”

RK. So what happened in 1946? What happened to the Polish minority?

“Well remember when the Soviets first came they would throw a family out of a three roomed flat and put in three Russian families, one in each room. Suddenly there was Russian spoken everywhere. When the Germans came the Russians would take their people back and then there was Polish spoken on the streets.”

RK. How do you feel as Poles living outside Poland?

“Listen, we never left Poland. Poland left us. Stalin changed the borders.”

The interview was a long and passionate one from two sisters looking back at a life full of dramas.

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LWÓW, UKRAINE – 2004 When I got back to the hotel why was I not surprised to see the driver of my lorry, who should have crossed into Poland by now, standing outside, waiting for me. Yes, just as he thought, the customs documents were not complete and he was sent back from the border.

This was the start of the long weekend, which meant the earliest he could get away was Tuesday the following week. I booked him into my hotel for 4 nights at my expense. He seemed philosophical about it but I had to pay an extra 1800 polish złoty to the transport company for lost time.

Saturday 29 May The day of departure. The seventeen days in the Ukraine were eventful, intense and physically and mentally exhausting. I was ready to return to Poland. The taxi that took me to the bus station had a broken windscreen, the mechanism to wind the window down was broken, the exhaust fumes were getting into the car. Noticing my discomfort the taxi driver, whilst driving, kept one hand on the steering wheel , reached over to my side and performed some mysterious actions that made the window drop down with a sudden jerk. He told me later he was still recovering from a serious operation. In hospital he was told he needed a life saving operation but the only way to get it was to pay the surgeon. Both patient and surgeon played a game of brinkmanship for several days until his condition got so serious his family gave in and collected enough money to pay for the operation.

Lwów is not far from the Polish border. When the bus set off it was half empty but during the journey the driver kept stopping to pick up more passengers, but not just any old passengers. Women would enter, all slim but wearing coats and carrying bags full of cigarettes. The bus was packed and full of activity. I could hear a continuous ripping of sellotape all around me. I was too embarassed to look around but I did notice in the reflection of the windows women taping thousands of cigarettes into their underclothes.

They politely asked if I would take some cigarettes over for them myself but I equally politely declined. When we arrived at the border everybody was ordered out by the customs officials. This routine goes on daily. The men, nuns and priests were allowed to go through and all the women, who had mysteriously put on a vast amount of weight by now, overladen in their winter coats on a warm day in May, were huddled tightly together awaiting inspection. I asked the inspector how long this might last as someone was waiting for me on the Polish side in the nearby town of Przemyśl. In a very matter of fact way he said it will take hours as the whole bus will be stripped down in the search for contraband.

They always search the passengers but the same people keep trying to smuggle goods over the border over and over again. Nevertheless it must still be worth their while to do it. The money they earn selling the goods on the Polish side feeds their families on the Ukrainian side. The inspector stopped a car with an orthodox priest and his wife inside and told him to take me to Przemyśl. I was back in Poland.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

OLD TOWN SQUARE,TARNÓW

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Tarnow, Poland – 2004

Odyssey was part of an exhibition organised by the Tarnow Cultural Centre entitled “Art on a European Street”. The carvings were placed in a close group in the square of the Old Town.

In the previous exhibition in Tarnow in 1998 there were 16 figures in the group. In 2004 there were 23 figures.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

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TARNOW, POLAND – 2004

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

Robert Koenig was interviewed by Polish Television during an outside broadcast in the Town Square. The reporter, Iwona Schymalla said “Robert Koenig is the creator of a new way of looking at outdoor sculpture in nature, in the landscape, even the urban landscape.”

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Zakopane, Tatra Mountains, Poland – 2004

GALLERY STRUG, ZAKOPANE

Zakopane was a significant place for the Odyssey carvings. Odyssey is following in the footsteps of my mother, from her home village in Poland to the United Kingdom. Odyssey is also looking for my sculptor uncle Jan Dudek. I went with Odyssey to look for his grave but returned the same year to Zakopane where he studied sculpture in the 1920’s. I brought my carvings to a place where he found his inspiration, a place I look on as my spiritual, sculptural home.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

“

Robert Koenig’s uncle was a sculptor, educated in the famous School of Wood Industry in

Zakopane. He was also a musician. Koenig is similar to him – like the pupils of the Zakopane school – he also blunts his tools in order to gain greater expression from the sharpely cut wood.

He likes to repeat the same motif, as in our very own rosary, which through repetition inclines

”

towards meditation and the delving into mysteries.

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PROF. JERZY MADEYSKI

ZAKOPANE, TATRA MOUNTAINS, POLAND – 2004

The Old Cemetery in Zakopane.

I remember visiting this place as a postgraduate student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. It was late autumn in 1983 and in the mountains winter had arrived early. I came to Zakopane for a few days to visit the art school and look for traces of a time when uncle Jan studied sculpture here. Some of the pupils asked if I could give a talk in the school on my work as a sculptor in England. I later got a message that the school authorities would not allow this as I “hadn’t been checked out yet”. Nevertheless I was invited to the house of Marcin Rząsa, a pupil of the school to show some slides privately. His father the well known woodcarver Antoni Rząsa taught in the school and after his death his son created a museum within the wooden family home filled with his father’s woodcarvings. His was one of the first graves I noticed in the old cemetery. It had a tree trunk sculpture placed on it. It looked to be roughly hewn by his pupils and was full of character. Many of the graves had tall tree stumps with a variety of carved motifs, Christ figures, wooden crosses. The cemetery itself has a very intimate feel with very tall birch trees and a narrow path winding through the centre. All the graves have a variety of interesting carved features and the overall effect is magical and atmospheric. Many well known people are buried here, writers poets, musicians, artists. Flowers and candles regularly appear on their graves such as the grave of the much loved children’s author Kornel Makuszyński.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY Eight years after my visit the legendary Witkacy was officially reburied here in his mother’s grave. He had committed suicide on the eastern borders soon after the German invasion of Poland when he heard of the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 18th. He was buried in a remote graveyard in a Ukrainian forest. It later transpired that they buried the wrong person in Zakopane. It could have been a scene out of one of his novels.

It is said that in many areas of his work Witkacy anticipated the most interesting and most essential phenomena in European thought and art with particular reference to people like Huxley, Orwell, the existential disquiet of Heidegger, Sartre, the feeling for the absurd and the grotesque in Ionesco and Beckett, the theatrical investigations of Artaud and Brecht.

Witkacy spent a lot of time in Zakopane in the early part of the 20th century. This is the time when my uncle would have roamed the same streets as a pupil studying sculpture at the officially named School of Wood Industry. It must have been a fascinating time in the town with so many notable personalities from the arts active in the area.

Looking at the other graves in this cemetery there was one of Antoni Kenar with a similar tree stump carving. Kenar gained his diploma in ornamental sculpture at the School of Wood Industry in 1925, one year before Uncle Jan. They must have known each other.

Kenar distinguished himself in later life as the inspiring director of the school from 1954 – 59, so much so that the school was renamed the Kenar School. Kenar designed and made the wooden cross sculpture on the grave of his teacher Karol Stryjeński. I believe the tree stump sculpture on Kenar’s grave was made by his pupils. I love this continuity. It is precious and priceless. So far I have been unable to find Uncle Jan’s grave. If I ever find it I would love to carve something on his grave, in the style of these sculptures in the Old Cemetery in Zakopane, to make him feel at home.

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Kraków, Museum of Archaeology, Poland – 2004

His monumental sculptures are known around the world. It is said they link east with west, the world of the living and that of the dead.

Robert Koenig’s famous Odyssey/Dziady carvings can be seen in two places in Krakow – in the Space Gallery in Florianska St. and in the gardens of the Museum of Archaeology.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY 23 Figures were created successively just as generations follow each other. Male and female figures carved out with a heavy hand more that of a peasant than an artist. These carvings are meant to remind us of the simplicity of existence close to the earth.

The Odyssey figures are undertaking a pilgrimage to all the places close to the artist either directly or through sentiment.

At each of these symbolic stops this wooden crowd acquires new meanings not only in the eyes of its creator but primarily in the eyes of the viewer.

INTERVIEW ON POLISH TELEVISION TVP3 – KRAKOW – JULY 2004

Robert Koenig’s carved slender figures can be placed between Polish gothic and folk art. What kind of sculpture is this? Robert Koenig is a happy man – that which in another instance could be seen as a sculptural mistake, works well here in terms of sculptural power and expression. This doesn’t happen often but in the case of the Odyssey figures it happens here. The expressiveness is underlined by the artist’s reference to the ceremony of All Souls Day from the Polish eastern territories, to the memory of those who came before and to his own identity.

ODYSSEY IN THE GARDENS OF THE MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY WITH THE WAWEL CASTLE IN THE BACKGROUND.

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„DZIENNIK POLSKI” NEWSPAPER, KRAKOW, POLAND, 2 JULY 2004.

KRAKÓW, MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY, POLAND – 2004

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At the foot of Wawel Castle your son has his studio.

PROF. PIOTR JARGUSZ KRAKOW 7 JUNE 2004

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

“

Our first destination was Krakow. We came to a very big hall; it may have been a theatre. All

night there was chaos. We had to undress, then our clothes were taken away to be disinfected and we had our hair shaved. The guards then separated us; old to one side and disabled to another. It was very embarrassing and humiliating as some of the girls were only fifteen years old.

I remember trying to use my handbag to cover myself a bit. The next day we came out in our hundreds on to a street surrounded with Guards and dogs as we walked through the town to a train station. On the way they gave us a piece of bread and a plastic cup of soup as the journey lasted a few days with stops. In the trucks there was only room to stand up, we used a corner of the truck as a toilet. The severe frost prevented the stench from spreading. We were travelling through Germany to the French border town called Metz. Half way there the train stopped for a couple of hours. The Guards opened the trucks and we felt stiff and freezing. We felt almost blind after being in the dark for so long. I remember we were not allowed to come out, but we were so thirsty. Some of the girls jumped out and brought some snow in from the railway line

MARIA DUDEK IN A POLISH ARMY UNIFORM

and we shared some to dampen our dry lips and refresh our faces. Our legs were swollen from standing up so long. We continued our journey, then for some reason the train stopped and for the next couple of hours we were transferred to a passenger train. What a relief that we could sit down even though the Guards were in every compartment. The door was left unlocked because there was no point escaping as you had nowhere to go. But sadly two young sisters took the risk. One of them was ill and they decided to escape no matter what. The train was going very slow and the Guards fell asleep. The girls opened the door and one after another they jumped out. Suddenly the train stopped, the Guards raised the alarm. We were very frightened we heard the gun shots as the girls were killed. At last we arrived at the station in the French town of Metz.

Again we all got out to go to a big building. There were about a thousand of us, all sorts of ages.

Again we had to undress and were strictly segregated into many groups. All the old went to one side and anyone who was disabled went to a different room. We don’t know where they went. I felt sorry for one woman who was very ill and she was so weak she just sat down . The Guards came and they gave her a few lashes on her bare back. We don’t know what happened to her after that. After, we dressed and stood outside. They gave us different badges on our lapels. Farmers came and picked tall and strong girls to work on the farms. Others went to the ammunition factory. In my group they were all 15 - 25 year olds. We were sent to an aeroplane

”

factory in Speyer.

“

MARIA KÖNIG

We were made to have our photographs taken to impress the Red Cross representatives. The

”

only decent dress available was passed on between all the girls to wear for the photographs.

A PHOTOGRAPH OF MARIA DUDEK TAKEN IN THE SLAVE LABOUR CAMPS IN GERMANY DURING WORLD WAR TWO.

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KRAKÓW, MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY, POLAND – 2004

IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROYAL CASTLE, KRAKÓW

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

A SINGLE ODYSSEY FIGURE WAS TAKEN OUT OF THE GROUP AND PLACED IN THE COURTYARD OF THE SPACE GALLERY IN FLORIANSKA STREET IN THE OLD TOWN.

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KRAKÓW, MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY, POLAND – 2004

A STREET IN KAZIMIERZ, KRAKÓW. PHOTO: BARBARA KÖNIG

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

THE GARDENS OF THE MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY, KRAKÓW, 2004

“

Until the age of 18 I had never been to Krakow. In 1938 my sister Roza who lived in Warsaw

asked me if I wanted to join an organization in the army called the “Junacki Hufiec Pracy”, the JHP. I always wanted to travel. I was never interested in farm work. I wasn’t strong enough for the constant hard physical labour.. On top of that I was always belittled by my stepmother and her children.

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KRAKÓW, MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY, POLAND – 2004 My mother died when I was 3 weeks old. There were only 2 other people who really loved me, my father and my brother Janek. Those 2 people I remembered for the rest of my life. Janek died at the age of 25.

I agreed to travel to my sister in Warsaw where I began my efforts to join the JHP organisation.

Various documents were needed to verify my health, moral and financial status.. They were not keen on accepting recruits from a poor background. Everything went well and commander Kuntz accepted me on the 6 August Street. At home my father helped me to pack my suitcase and was pleased that I was going to be happy. When I left the house to go to Zagorzany Station I said farewell to my father and broke down in tears. I cried almost all the way to Warsaw. Such was my grief on leaving my father. My brother Joseph and sister Róza were waiting for me at the station in Warsaw. I stayed with my sister on Ulica Mała in the Praga district. It took up to a month to complete the formalities of joining the JHP. During this time my sister took me around Warsaw.

I went to the cinema for the first time to see a film called “Czar Cyganerii” with the famous Polish tenor Jan Kiepura in the lead role together with his wife Marta Egert. It was a beautiful film.

I really loved life in the big city. My brother started to worry about me when rumours of an impending war with Germany became more frequent. In the evening they started to black out the windows. Józek told me I was being sent to the town of Lysek in the Slask region, to an army camp close to the German border. But I wasn’t thinking of a possible war. I was just pleased to be accepted to the organisation. Róza and my brother’s wife accompanied me to the train station and wished me much happiness and satisfaction from my new career. I arrived at the barracks and was greeted by the female camp commander. It was a large building with upper floors. I gave in my civilian clothes and was given my uniform which I liked very much. The sleeping quarters were large with bunk beds. The beds had to be made up as a “cube” otherwise the bedding ended up being thrown out of the window. I was always complemented on my bed making skills. I liked it there a lot especially as during the first year we studied subjects such as history, grammar, anatomy, cooking, sewing. We sewed army uniforms, did gardening as there was a large vegetable garden. Apart from that there was gymnastics and drill (musztra) in the afternoon etc. One thing I never liked was lining up according to height. I was small but at least I never ended up in the last group of four. We wore special skirts for our outings. We went to Cieszyn where the pilots Zwirko and Wigura died. We observed a 3 minute silence in their honour. We were invited to parade in Rybnik. All these events pleased me a great deal. I never once thought of Dominikowice. We were promised leave after 6 months. Unfortunately by the end of August 1939 everything had changed just as my brother had predicted. Our camp commander told us not to worry but we were not going home. War with Germany was unavoidable and was to happen quite soon and we were to be needed for various duties. “Next week we will organise a farewell dance and we will invite the men from the JHP”. I remember it being a sad dance and the men were already called up to the army. The following day a train was ordered for us and we were told to take our sewing machines to the town of Pinczów where we started sewing gas masks for the civilian population. All this happened amid an atmosphere of panic. We were helped by prisoners serving life sentences. They were all happy to do this work. After a few days

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY panic took hold and people started to flee.Our commander gave orders to march on foot towards the river Wisla. Germans had crossed the Polish border. It was as if all hell had broken loose together with Lucifer and all the devils. I didn’t know why people were fleeing, whole families with their screaming children. We tried to help them. Women were shouting that the Germans were killing people. German planes had already started to fly low and fire their guns at the civilian population. We broke away from the main crowd to go in another direction and get a ferry across

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KRAKÓW, MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY, POLAND – 2004 the Wisła river. We were ordered to set up field kitchens and accomodation in empty schools for the fleeing population. Army patrols were showing us in which direction to go and what to do but it was all too late. Crowds were fleeing goodness knows where, warplanes were firing on them.

We were heading through Sandomierz towards Zaklikowa but this time we were walking through forests where we could rest a little and make some soup. We saw terrible sights during our walk with burning houses and deserted streets.

At around 2am we saw a colourful cross in the sky radiating from the centre. This vision terrified us. Our commander told us not to worry but that this was a sign from God. We headed towards Janów Lubelski for one or two days crossing fields in order to avoid the firing from the warplanes.

We approached Janów towards evening. It was dark and there was no other road. The whole town was in flames. Everything was burning, people were jumping out of windows, many were burned, horses were lying dead in the roads, telegraph poles lay on the ground. I got caught in some of the cables but managed to free myself. Eventually we managed to get through the town but by now our group was smaller. I don’t know what happened to the others. Our commander got lost but we were led by our squad leader. Another long walk awaited us in the direction of Krasny Staw. We came across an army patrol which took us to where the Polish army was stationed. It was around midday and we were given dinner but suddenly German warplanes appeared and started machine gunning so we hid under ammunition trucks. We were lucky. Our soldiers quickly defended themselves. We carried on our way and after a couple of days we were close to Krasny Staw. We stopped in some building where we could stay the night and where there was food. Our leader was told that nearby was a small hospital in a school where there were injured soldiers who also needed some food. I was chosen with one other to take 2 loaves of bread and some tinned meat. It was a dangerous one hour walk away. The sound of gunfire persuaded us to hide in a cornfield. Zosia suggested we do not move until it gets quiet. After an hour we carried on our way and finally delivered the food to the hospital kitchen. We then waited for our girls to arrive as we didn’t know where we were going. Together we walked through the town of Rudnik which was close to Krasny Staw. There were only 10 of us left but our leader told us to stick together.

We went to a nearby village to try to get some civilian clothes and shoes. We hid our clothes in a haystack and then lay on top to get some rest but people told us the German soldiers were

”

nearby and the Russians were also near the town digging trenches.

MARIA KÖNIG

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Hove, All Saints Church â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2006

From 1997 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2005 the Odyssey figures had toured various venues in Poland and the Ukraine. With the aid of an Arts Council grant 23 carved male and female figures were transported to the UK. Their first exhibition took place at the All Saints Church in Hove during the Brighton Festival.

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ODYSSEY (1997â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2012), A SCULPTORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

The Polish transporters had wrapped the faces of the carvings with corrugated cardboard to protect them from any damage. They were unloaded and brought inside the main door of the church. It was a strange sight. The Polish figures had travelled from across Europe and this was their first stop on their UK tour.

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HOVE, ALL SAINTS CHURCH – 2006

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

Life in the Displaced Persons Camp

“

Everybody had somewhere safe to sleep and there was a kitchen with plenty to eat for

everyone. These camps were supposed to be temporary places. We were moved to a number of places before we were taken to our permanent D.P. Camp (Displaced Persons Camp). It was in a small town called Landstuhl. In the middle of forests were huge army blocks. Every day people were brought from different places such as factories, farms, labour camps and concentration camps. We stood near the entrance gate to watch if anybody we knew was coming in. There were many emotional moments when families were reunited. Brothers and sisters who lost contact during the war had found each other again. There were around eight thousand people in my camp. At first there was chaos but soon everything was organised. At first we were under the American Zone and later the French took over. There were separate blocks for families, single people, and officers. There was also a block used as a hospital. There were people from all kinds of professions such as actors, musicians, sportsmen, teachers, and doctors. Also lots of different nationalities, Ukrainian, Latvians, Russians but most of them were Polish. At that moment nobody was fit to make any plans or to travel. The camp existed for about 2 years. There were many people dying or ill. There was plenty of food but because we had starved for so long, we had to learn to eat normally again very gradually. Some people couldn’t control themselves and they became ill. It was too much of a shock to their system. We also received parcels from England, Canada and America. The organisation called U.N.R.A. who took care of all the people in the D.P. camps brought clothes and shoes. For us the D.P. Camp was a kind of convalescent camp. I became ill and had to go to hospital for lots of treatment. I had my eyes X-rayed, and also discovered I had ulcers. I was put on a strict diet for more than a year. In the camp I was

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HOVE, ALL SAINTS CHURCH – 2006

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY involved in a wide variety of jobs. One of them was to organise a group of scouts to do various activities. We had a very happy time. There were football teams who played against the French and Germans. But fighting always broke out when anyone played with the Germans. It was too soon after the war to play friendly games with the Germans. We had a chapel converted from a garage and three priests who had survived the concentration camps. Everything was getting back to normal. Many people were getting married. I had many proposals of marriage but I could not trust anyone. After two years everybody had to make a decision about where they wanted to go. There were delegates coming from many countries looking for people for work. Brazil took families to work on the coffee plantations. France wanted farm workers. I put my name down for Switzerland but the doctor would not allow me to go because of my bad health. It took me two years to recover from all my illnesses. I had planned to go back to Poland. But I received a letter from my aunt with very sad news telling me my father had died in July 1945. She wrote telling me that my uncle who lives in America said he wanted me to come and stay with him and his family where I would be very welcome. At first I couldn’t get over the sad news of my fathers death.

This put me off going back to Poland. So I decided to go to America. I started to go to English lessons in the camp. But I found difficulty getting all the right papers and documents, which I needed to go to America. My uncle suggested I come to England first so that it would be easier for him to bring me to America from there. In the meantime many people were leaving the camp going to many different countries. This was a very sad time for me because I had to say goodbye to a lot of dear friends. I remember very clearly the time when the train was leaving to take people to Brazil. The orchestra played the Polish National Anthem. The platform was crowded with friends crying and waving goodbye. The train pulled away slowly. Those people on the train would never return again to their native country. It was very moving. Their property and their houses were taken over by Russian families. In the summer of 1947 came a group of delegates from England. They held a meeting at the main hall to see how many people wanted to come to England to work in the cotton industry. They only wanted single people. They offered free travel and two shillings and sixpence spending money. This was just what I wanted. I was half way to America! But I had to work first for three years to fulfill the contract, which I had agreed. My three months English lessons came in very handy. So my friends and I volunteered to go. We were all set for the long journey to England and very excited. But when we saw the boat!, it was so very small, and we thought that maybe it was not very safe. The sea was very rough and the boat was rocking from side to side. This coupled with the bad weather made us all very ill. For the whole 7 hour journey I was sick. I thought I was dying and vowed if I ever made it to dry land I would never

”

set foot on a boat again.

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MARIA KÖNIG

Chichester Cathedral â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2007

Chichester Cathedral marked the start of the Odyssey tour around the UK following the first exhibition in my home town of Hove in East Sussex, which itself was the first exhibition in the UK after arriving from Poland.

I chose many Cathedral venues due to the spiritual nature of the Odyssey project. It is a project about people, about journeys they have to make in their lives.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY The Dean of Chichester cathedral has said: ‘Our perception of it depends on what we bring to the experience. On one level, Robert Koenig has produced some exquisitely carved human figures of massive proportions. But just as his own vision was enlarged by the experience of creating this work so there is scope for each of us to reflect on our own roots and the diversity of humanity. I urge people to come and see this extraordinary exhibition while it is here in Chichester.’

THE FEMALE “CHICHESTER FIGURE”

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CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL – 2007 The female “Chichester Figure” was carved in the Cathedral cloisters in April 2007 from a storm damaged cedar tree that grew on the Goodwood Estate in Chichester. The tree was donated by the Duke of Richmond. It is the 27th figure of the Odyssey group.

THE OLDEST CEDARS AT GOODWOOD WERE PLANTED IN 1761 BY THE 3RD DUKE OF RICHMOND AND BY 1881 HAD EARNED A MENTION IN THE “MANUAL OF CONIFERA’E” AS SOME OF THE FINEST CEDARS IN EUROPE. IN THE PUBLICATION “TREES OF INTEREST AT GOODWOOD” 1912 TREE NO 75 PLANTED 1864 AT 5 YEARS OLD MEASURED 54FT IN HEIGHT AND 9.5FT IN GIRTH. THIS TREE WAS FELLED IN 2006 AFTER STORMS HAD MADE IT UNSAFE. PART OF THE TREE WAS DONATED TO THE SCULPTOR ROBERT KOENIG.

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CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2007 Part of the Odyssey exhibition is the filming of a musical intervention amongst the carved figures. It is a way to animate them, to hold a conversation with them. The Head Chorister of Chichester Cathedral agreed to sing whilst standing in amongst the monumental carved people.

I am often asked if the faces are based on anybody in particular. They never are but it is interesting how often, purely by chance, a member of the public comes along looking like one of the figures. The figures are carved in public during the exhibitions. Many conversations are held. Sometimes, subconsciously, I would notice a certain look or hairstyle. This would creep into one of the carvings.

One of the people helping me set up the Chichester exhibition looked uncannily like a carving I had made several years earlier and which I had exhibited together with the Odyssey carvings.

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Portsmouth Cathedral – 2007

“You who tread their footsteps remember their story” 89

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Milton Keynes, Church of Christ the Cornerstone â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2007

I lived and worked in Milton Keynes between 1987-97. After many years of travelling to Poland I had wondered how, as a sculptor, I could address issues of ancestry, heritage and belonging. The idea to carve a crowd of monumental symbolic ancestors finally emerged during my 10 years in the city. I tried out the first three carved figures using cedar trees donated by the Milton Keynes Parks Trust. The figures needed to be elongated and monumental. They were not to be real people but spirits called up from the ground.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY The proportions and the poses needed to be worked out carefully. I was happy with these figures and decided to transport them to Poland to carve the rest of the Odyssey crowd in Dominikowice village. I had no other plans for them. It was a personal, essential statement that would encapsulate many of my ideas about sculpture and woodcarving. Three figures left Milton Keynes for Poland in 1996 and 26 figures returned in 2007.

THE FIRST THREE ODYSSEY FIGURES WERE CARVED IN MILTON KEYNES AND LEFT FOR POLAND IN 1996.

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MILTON KEYNES, CHURCH OF CHRIST THE CORNERSTONE – 2007

I CARVED TWO FIGURES TO REPRESENT THE CITY.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY There were moving moments at the opening of the exhibition when the musician Jean Pierre Rasle suddenly appeared at the back of the church playing an improvised lament on the pipes. He walked up and down the figures casting his spell. I wanted these figures to talk about their experiences, about where they have been or where they are going, about the sounds they have heard. I wanted musicians to create an atmosphere , to tease out their messages.

THE REPORTER RUTH DICKINSON WROTE:

“

Every time I have been to the Church of Christ the Cornerstone in Milton Keynes, there have

been people milling about in the lobby, chatting and being busy.

This time, in among them were several slightly smaller than life size carved wooden figures. They have a strange effect. They seem so friendly that you can’t help but respond to them, to smile at them even.

It’s a different atmosphere entirely when you enter the main worship area. Standing at the altar, facing out towards the congregation, is a whole crowd of figures. Larger than life size, and each with a uniquely sad expression. There is something eerie about this collection – it’s intimidating and fascinating at the same time.

Odyssey is the work of Robert Koenig, a Manchester born sculptor of Polish descent whose exploration into his family history led to the creation of this project. He first visited the village of Dominikowice in south east Poland, where his mother grew up, in 1971.

JEAN PIERRE RASLE PLAYS HIS PIPES TO THE ODYSSEY CROWD.

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MILTON KEYNES, CHURCH OF CHRIST THE CORNERSTONE – 2007

IN THE TREE CATHEDRAL, MILTON KEYNES.

“It was then that I thought I must try to respond to this idea of ancestry and roots,” he says. “ I uncovered my family tree which dated back to the 1700’s. All these names, they were all my relatives. My aim was to try to represent or symbolise them – to call up the ghosts. I was carving symbolic figures of my ancestors.”

He carved them out of trees that grew in the village. “ I had to carve them there in Poland. Their presence or their energies are around in the fields. I thought that if I carved them there I’d get their atmosphere and vibes. If there was anyone around, they might suggest themselves to me. It was the right place to come. I imagined that’s where my ancestors might be”.

Robert began the project in earnest in 1995 – carving three figures from storm damaged cedar trees. Over the next ten years he created more than 20 figures in Dominikowice and began exhibiting them in southern Poland. “ I kept moving them around. I took them on a journey to the places of my ancestors. Not just galleries but fields, wells, everywhere they would have been.”.

As soon as the figures began to travel, he says, the story behind them started to take on a new meaning. “They became witnesses to other events. When they left the village new ideas took over” What started out as a testament to his ancestry and his mother in particular, quickly began to incorporate the universal themes of migration and displacement.

“Odyssey was following a family journey. My mother was taken to one of the Nazi labour camps.

She was herded into a cattle truck and taken to Speyer in Germany where the labour camp

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY was,” he recalls. “She barely survived, but ended up as a refugee in Stockport where she died in 2005.”.

The figures, many carved from trees that grew near his mother’s farm, are heading to Stockport.

He plans to take them to a Manchester cemetary where his mother is buried.

“Odyssey started as a journey following my mother’s journey, but it became so much more.

Everywhere I went people – Africans, Asians, Europeans – would come up to me and start telling me their stories.”.

The sombre faces, he says, are intended to reflect the harshness of migration. “ The message is a serious one. It’s not a happy jaunt across Europe,” he says. “ It’s a sad journey of migration and displacement. The stories people tell me are not happy stories. I’ve met holocaust survivors and refugees.”

Robert says that in some cases the responses to the figures are quite intense. “ I place them in locations just for half an hour. People come and look and start talking to them. The figures are so approachable. People hold their hands. They want to be their friends. It’s amazing to witness really.”

It’s not something he consciously thought about when he started the project though.

“This is my project, my personal project. I know that for something as visible as this, people are going to respond. It’s not like it’s just one or two figures hiding in the corner. You can’t ignore this.

But you can’t think about that when you are creating. You shouldn’t have to provide work people will ‘like’. It has to make sense to you. Then you release it and see what happens.”

That ‘releasing’ can make the artist feel quite vulnerable, he says. “You are exposing yourself and your ideas to the world. You are leaving yourself open to all kinds of remarks. But there has never been much criticism. People have been so moved really. People have emotional experiences, spiritual experiences even.”

That’s one of the reasons he decided to show the figures in sacred places.

“It’s not art in the sense that it should only be shown in an art gallery where hardened art critics, all with their own view on art to push, come and scrutinise every detail,” Robert says. “I wanted them to be in a place where ordinary people go.

Churches seemed like the best places to put them where they would be seen by ordinary people and not just by a specialist art public. Churches are where the communities are. It was a spiritual project in that sense rather than solely an art exhibit.

It’s an ever – evolving project. Even during the time the figures were in Milton Keynes Robert has added three to their number. He doesn’t know where or when it will end. This idea of evolution is entirely consistent with the inspiration of the project and the onward appearance of the figures.

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MILTON KEYNES, CHURCH OF CHRIST THE CORNERSTONE – 2007 “Some of the work I do is smaller and more polished and refined,” says Robert. “These had to look like peasants. I wanted them to be rough and ready. My mother was herded into a cattle truck. These figures look as if that is where they have been. It’s right that they are a bit beaten about – they just get slung in the back of a lorry when they are moved around.

It represents the harsh story of human history and the journeys that people have to make. It’s depressing but consistent in a way. People have to make these kinds of journeys all over the

”

world. They probably always will

THREE UNPAINTED CEDARWOOD FIGURES.

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THE ROCHESTER FIGURE WAS CARVED FROM A SEASONED OAK BEAM DONATED BY MORGAN TIMBER.

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Rochester Cathedral â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2007

The Nave of the Cathedral is usually cleared of all the chairs during August, which made a perfect space for the Odyssey figures to breathe ODYSSEY is not just an exhibition of woodcarvings, but is primarily a travelling installation, a performance, a project which is continuously developing and augmenting in the public gaze. The public is witness and participant to the ODYSSEY journey which has stretched from the steps of the Cathedral of St Jura in the city of Lwow in the Ukraine, through the fields, mountains and valleys of Southern Poland, the Cathedral steps in Chichester to a grave in a cemetery in North Manchester.

I spent a week commuting to Rochester very early in the morning to arrive when the cathedral was about to open in order to work on the Rochester pilgrim carving. It was a quiet time before the tourists started arriving. A perfect moment to contemplate Charles Dickensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s farewell to Rochester and to the cathedral:

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ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL – 2007

“

A brilliant morning shines on the old city. Its antiquities and ruins are surpassingly beautiful, with

a lusty ivy gleaming in the sun, and the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes of glorious light from moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods and fields - or rather, from the one great garden of the whole cultivated island in its yielding time – penetrate into the cathedral, subdue its earthy odour, and preach the Resurrection and the Life. The cold stone tombs of centuries ago grow warm; and flecks of brightness dart into the sternest marble corners

”

of the building, fluttering there like wings.

CHARLES DICKENS.

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Stockport Art Gallery â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2007

Stockport was the most moving part of the UK tour. The Odyssey figures were on a spiritual journey following the route taken by my mother from her home village in Poland, through the Nazi slave labour camps in Germany and on to Stockport as a displaced person.

The Stockport figure was carved inside the gallery. A sycamore tree had been interfering with the underground services on one of the streets nearby and was felled.

Stockport was the first place my mother found lodgings after arriving from the displaced persons camp in Germany. It is also the place where she died in 2005.

It was very important for the Odyssey project to take the carvings around the area to visit places important to her.

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Her first lodgings were in a street not far from the art gallery. In her autobiography she writes:

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STOCKPORT ART GALLERY – 2007

“

I was very glad then when we saw the land of England at last. We were wondering what England would look like. We were told

there was a lot of rain and fog, but also that English men were tall and handsome, but some of us thought they would not be interested in foreign girls like us. We also heard that the Polish army from Italy was in England after being demobilised. When we left the boat my friend said, “Maria, go and buy us some snacks, you can speak English”. My English was only very basic but good enough to get by. Afterwards we were taken to a camp in a village called Wigsley, near Lincoln. We stayed there for a fortnight. One day the Polish soldiers came to visit us. After two weeks we were again taken to different towns. The following day they started allocating the places

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STOCKPORT ART GALLERY – 2007 where we were to work. Some went to Rochdale others to Oldham. I went to Stockport together with four Ukrainians. A very nice manager greeted us in the office. I already spoke a little English, which pleased her. The Ukrainians went together to one home and I went with a young English woman called Vera. The manager told me she found me a catholic home. I got to this family home in Florist Street, Edgeley but a kind of depression quickly came over me. The family consisted of a widow and her unmarried sister, two daughters; Mary who worked in a café and Vera who went to work with me. She worked in the office. Dinner was ready on the table. But all that came into my head was: Is this house the place where I will spend the rest of my life? They were stupid thoughts but I burst into tears.

After a while I ate my dinner and Vera took me to another room and started playing Chopin on the Piano to cheer me up. They were very understanding. I talked often about the labour camp. I was given a hard camp bed in the same bedroom as Vera and her Mother. Vera was very happy that she would have someone to go to the cinema with. They liked me very much and in the evenings after work we played various games such as scrabble etc., in front of the fire. When Vera wanted to go to the cinema she always asked, “Auntie Mary, can I have a shilling and an orange to go to the cinema?” The 60 year old auntie always replied “Oh no, not again”. But she always gave

”

in. This used to make me laugh. They used to take me for day trips to Blackpool and other places and also to dances and concerts.

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A BBC TV reporter filmed the movement of the carvings during the day. I took some of the tall figures to the television studios in Manchester later that day and talked about the idea behind the Odyssey project. The effect was that the exhibition in Stockport Art Gallery was one of their best attended events. The exhibition brought many diverse groups of people to the gallery. I met many of them during my one week carving the Stockport figure. I was introduced to an Auschwitz survivor who was visibly moved and shook my hand without saying a word. It was a moving moment for me. A Kurdish family came and stayed for the whole afternoon. In the visitors book they wrote:

“

Your idea of journey and going back to your roots and your mum’s village is just fantastic. I

really think you’ve captured the true feelings of the people who lived and died and whether they wanted or not they just started and finished their journey of life. They probably wanted to speak about their happy and sad moments but never did or could. Here you are bringing them back to life; their spirits are screaming loudly when we are looking to their faces. Each of them looks very settled, strong and confident in their feature. They are expressing their attitudes of life, death and existence. I feel like they are my family, my cousins and my neighbours whom I had to leave and whom were killed and disappeared because of war. They are back now and they are telling me

”

they are alive… (from Kurdistan)

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STOCKPORT ART GALLERY – 2007 Another visitor wrote:

“

It was so wonderful to see your works in the flesh and also to chat about families with you...

the fact that your parents married at St Joseph’s RC Church in Reddish as did mine and also that they went on similar journeys really shook me!... displaced as regards family... my Irish mother came to England because my grandfather died suddenly and so her scholarship and possibility to live her dream of being a teacher died on that day... and your family went through their own diaspora for more terrible reasons... I felt your figures expressed so many things... sadness... reflection... weariness... so many circumstances opposed them... thank you so much for expressing all their sorrow, longing... etc... my mother left a hard life but a grounded life in Ireland... both cultures knew about hardship and working the land... I used to wonder when I got older how did my mother ever cope with industrial England but I guess she got on with it and the

”

next generation were allowed the possibility of choice... many thanks... it was good to chat...

The final destination on that emotional day was to take some of the carvings to my mother’s grave in the Polish section of Moston cemetery in north Manchester.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY Three symbolic ancestors, carved from lime trees that grew near my mother’s farm in Dominikowice village in Poland, that grew where she had grown up, had travelled across Europe to pay their final respects to her.

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Salisbury Cathedral – 2008

The exhibition in Salisbury Cathedral was the first during the Cathedral’s 750th anniversary year in 2008. The figures were laid out in front of the majestic Great West Doors. A fallen sycamore tree was donated by the Earl of Pembroke in Wilton House. This tree was to be carved into the “Salisbury Figure” in the cloisters during the exhibition in January of that year and would be the 32nd figure in the whole Odyssey group. It was to take the standard week that I spend on all the figures. This is one of the ways I try to maintain a consistent look with all the figures over the years. It is supposed to prevent some faces looking overworked and refined. Over a 15 year period this is a very difficult look to maintain as my style and technique naturally changes and develops. The handle of the lignum vitae mallet I had used to carve over 75 trees suddenly snapped during the initial stages of the carving. This happened whilst a TV film crew was in the process of documenting the carving of the Salisbury pilgrim. I was able to continue with my replacement mallet. I replaced the broken handle a few weeks later but the feel of the mallet had changed and I just couldn’t carry on with it. It went into retirement. The female Salisbury figure was the first

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY to be given a name. During the course of the carving a number of people had come up to me and told me with complete assurance her name was Mary. They had adopted her. I was greatly moved and humbled when one of the Cathedral guides came up to me after having read the information boards of the exhibition. Amongst other things the boards tell of this spiritual journey I was making following my mother’s journey from her village in Poland to the Nazi slave labour camps in Germany during World War Two. She said: “I was born in Hamburg during the War and I know we Germans did terrible things to you Poles.

As an act of reconciliation could you put a smile on this Salisbury figure?” All the previous figures have grim, severe unsmiling expressions. They symbolise in part universal migration, political, economic. They are not happy affairs. I made an effort to put a deliberate smile on this figure. It was a cleansing spiritual experience for me. Since that time the faces of the Odyssey figures I think are a lot calmer.

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SALISBURY CATHEDRAL – 2007

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Sermon I don’t know how many dozens of times I have read or heard the first chapter of John’s gospel; but these last 2 days have been the first time when I have read today’s gospel in close conjunction with an encounter with the sculptor Robert Koenig’s exhibition which arrived here on Friday morning; and I am conscious how much my reading is affected by it. So can I encourage you to make your own encounter with that exhibition.

Robert Koenig is British, but his mother was a Polish victim of the Nazis, deported from her home to labour camps, lucky to survive the war, and displaced for the remainder of her life from her origins. The figures in this exhibition explore the implications of that personal odyssey: carved from wood which grew in the fields around the Polish village where it started, travelling to a series of stops along its route, added to and changed in each place.

I came away from it with a range of things chuntering away in my mind. Questions: how important are origins? what is a home? what is it like to be uprooted? Recollections from our common history: the horrors and displacements of the Second World War. Modern equivalents: Palestinians still living in refugee camps 60 years on; Rwanda; the implosion of Yugoslavia and the invention of ‘ethnic cleansing’. And more personal, domestic things: my own sense of belonging in England, but also my loyalty and pride in the fact that my parents were not English, but American and Welsh.

Where we come from is immensely important to us: look at the number of people who are busy tracing their family trees, the urge many adopted people have to find out about their birth parents.

Perhaps this urge to belong somewhere is the counterpart to the great and increasing fluidity of modern society, which in both rich and poor countries sees people moving away from their place of birth and finding, or at least seeking, a life elsewhere. For those who come to Salisbury to retire, that can be a good thing; for those who leave the coast of north Africa on a boat run by people smugglers, hoping from desperation to make some kind of living in Europe, it is hard to see the advantages of our modern fluidity. The existence of the British National Party, the constant news stories about immigration issues, NIMBYism – these are all symptoms of concerns with place and belonging which will only grow as our social change accelerates.

CANON EDWARD PROBERT, CHANCELLOR

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York Minster â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2008

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YORK MINSTER – 2008

“

Koenig repeats his motifs and arranges them in rhythmic sequences creating with them

compositions with an almost sacred dignity. This repetition inclines towards meditation and the

”

delving into mysteries.

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Koenig has created a series of larger than life size figures, similar in their general features but nevertheless different physiognomically. He carved them from lime trees, which remembered his mountain dwelling ancestors. Trees that were witnesses, in whose grain was coded his genealogy and the bloody history of his land. They are not sculptures then, not dead pieces of beautifully worked timber, but living symbols, growing out of the earth like anthropomorphic plants.

Maybe inherent in them, as early Slav beliefs demand, are the spirits of Koenig’s predecessors, and those from whose ashes they grew.

Mysticism? Maybe. Definitely mystery, but isn’t art one big mystery, one big obsession and an attempt to reach the not wholly conscious layers of our personality. An attempt to find the answer to that age old question “where do we come from, where are we, where are we going?”

PROF. JERZY MADEYSKI

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YORK MINSTER â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2008

Robert Koenig is part of a tradition that is resurfacing after a time of near invisibility. He drew from a culture of carving that was rooted in the folk art of Central Europe; a naturalistic depiction of the world with mythic overtones.

Robert Koenigâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s is a unique voice in British Sculpture, indeed it is doubtful that his work can properly be said to be British. It is European Sculpture, not as a trans-national and indistinct idea of the modern world, but the product of a specific region and time, speaking through history.

CRAIGIE HORSFIELD, 1992

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Cwmaman, St Joseph’s Church, South Wales – 2008

Cwmaman is a former coal mining pit village near Aberdare in South Wales. Odyssey was shown at St Joseph’s Church as part of the Environmental Festival in the village. It was fascinating to meet people at the opening of the exhibition who had similar backgrounds, born in the UK to Polish parents who had come over after the war and with similar immigrant experiences.

A memorable event was the memorial service in which a packed chapel full of villagers was asked to remember loved ones departed. Everyone was given a candle to place at the foot of an Odyssey figure that they most related to. It was a wonderful moment of contemplation in a chapel within the dramatic and beautiful landscape that surrounds Cwmaman.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY One of the regular problems of touring Odyssey is finding a labour force to load and unload the heavy figures from the lorry. A most inspiring sight was to see what looked like the whole community , men and women, turn up at the crack of dawn to carry the figures in to the church.

During the exhibition I carved a 10ft “Joseph Figure” in the Odyssey style, which was to stay permanently outside the church as a reminder that the Odyssey figures, which had started their journey in 1997 in Dominikowice village in Poland, had also passed through Cwmaman.

JOSEPH FIGURE

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CWMAMAN, ST JOSEPHS CHURCH, SOUTH WALES – 2008

...And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome, “And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees; – Yet thought softly, morosely of them, and as indifferently As of ourselves or those whom we For years have loved, and will again Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain....

”

ALUN LEWIS

(War poet and short fiction writer. Born and brought up in Cwmaman)

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THE EXHIBITION IN JERSEY WAS PART OF THE LIBERATION DAY CELEBRATIONS.

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Town Church, St Helier, Jersey – 2009

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COPYRIGHT © JERSEY EVENING POST

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TOWN CHURCH, ST HELIER, JERSEY – 2009 The Jersey pilgrim was carved from a diseased lime tree growing in Government House. The tree was 120 years old. The timber was still good enough to carve but the onset of decay darkened the wood in places. It was the 35th figure in the Odyssey group. It continues the idea to carve a tree local to the exhibition venue, which would represent the spirit of that place.

The Jersey pilgrim honoured the memory of the Island’s Occupation slave workers.

During the unveiling the Bailiff, Sir Philip Bailhache, said: “The cracks in the wood of some of the figures speak of broken bones and bodies, and of violence. The simplicity of the clothing and the roughness of much of the carving testify to the primitive conditions in which the slaves were forced to exist and the privations they suffered. They speak of painful memories which ought never to be erased.”

Many school groups came to see the exhibition. Some stayed to draw the figures. They were all told about the trees used to carve the figures. Many of the trees were victims of storms, old age or the developer’s bulldozers. Some were cut down because they were dangerous, or interfered with underground services. Often when they are cut down they are cut up into smaller chunks to make it easier to pick up, burn or a throw away. Using trees for woodcarvings gives them a new life. The Polish lime trees grew out of control and too close together in a deep ravine where they all competed for sunlight. By taking out some of these trees, thinning out the plantation, the others that remained had a lot more space and sunlight to grow and develop.

THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR TO THE UK ATTENDED THE UNVEILING OF THE “JERSEY PILGRIM”.

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RAYMOND BANKS, THE HON. CHAIRMAN OF THE JERSEY PUBLIC SCULPTURE TRUST SKETCHED THE PROGRESS OF THE CARVING OF THE JERSEY FIGURE.

COPYRIGHT © JERSEY EVENING POST

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TOWN CHURCH, ST HELIER, JERSEY – 2009

SCHOOLCHILDREN SKETCH THE CARVINGS IN THE CHURCH. COPYRIGHT © JERSEY EVENING POST

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY Sometimes touring the Odyssey project can get on top of you…

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Worcester Cathedral â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2009

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippona, philosopher and theologian of the late antiquity acknowledged rhythm as the basic notion of the whole of aesthetics. And, moreover, saw in it the source of all beauty. In order to do this he broadened this concept so that it would take in not only audible rhythm, but also visible rhythm. And not only the rhythm of physical bodies but also the rhythm of the soul in people, nature, experiences and actions. Today, after fifteen hundred years, more and more often we admit that he is right. It happens like this though with the changes of our views about time, perceived more often not in its linear, but in its cyclical dimension, understood as a series of occurrences that follow one another in a specified order and repeating itself periodically. Like years, seasons and generations Robert Koenig repeats his carved figures and arranges them in rhythmic sequences creating from them compositions with an almost sacred dignity. Rhythm as aesthetics and rhythm as a visible group of logical cycles comes together in his art into one coherent whole, into one harmony of the world. Koenig talks about himself and his feelings knowing surely that every work of art must have a personal dimension in order for it to aspire to a universal one. The most universal works originate as a reflection of the most personal , intimate and considered emotions.

PROF. JERZY MADEYSKI

The Worcester Cathedral exhibition came at a time when my wife, Regina, was expecting our second son, Adam. I asked her to pose for the “Worcester Figure”. It is the first pregnant Odyssey figure.

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WORCESTER CATHEDRAL –2009

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LADY MORRISON OF THE MADRESFIELD ESTATE DISCUSSES THE POPLAR TREE SHE DONATED FOR THE CARVING OF THE “WORCESTER FIGURE”.

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WORCESTER CATHEDRAL –2009

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JONJO IMPROVISES ON THE FIDDLE IN FRONT OF THE ODYSSEY FIGURES

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WORCESTER CATHEDRAL –2009

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Odyssey heads

ODYSSEY HEADS 1997

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ODYSSEY HEADS

ODYSSEY HEADS 2007

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The Lime Tree The lime (linden) tree is one of the most frequently planted trees in Polish gardens. From ancient times, lime was considered a sacred tree. It protected against lightning and evil spirits. It was a place to leave offerings to the gods and conduct ritual dances. Later, after the advent of Christianity, the tree was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and many roadside shrines were hung on its trunk. In early Poland many kings held war councils and judgements beneath this tree. Jan Kochanowski (1530â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1584), known as the father of Polish poetry, wrote his verses beneath a lime tree. One of his poems is written for and about the lime tree.

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THE LIME TREE Lime was a tree with inestimable value. It was used in woodcarvings especially shrines and holy figures and in the making of musical instruments. It is soft to carve and has a creamy colour, ideal for applying colour. The grain is not so dominant and visible as in oak. The magnificent altar of St Maryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in Krakow is made from lime. From its inner bark, rough shoes called chodaki were made as well as baskets and hats. From its seeds, an oil was extracted for consumptives and for use in oil lamps. It made for wonderful honey.

All the parts of the tree were useful in Polish folk medicine. The bark and leaves were applied to the eyes and to inflamed areas of the skin. For headaches, the leaves were applied to the head and a tea made from the flowers. It was also supposed to be helpful for hair loss and was known as a general panacea for nerve troubles. In old apothecaries, a distillation of the flower was supposedly effective for convulsions and epilepsy.

ROBERT KOENIG IN THE SHADOW OF THE TREE OF LIFE

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In the Shadow of the Tree of Life All that is past gives an object added meaning.

That which is old is authentic and genuine, real, tied to the world from whence it came.

That which is from long ago does not tell lies therefore is pure truth.

That which is ancient is primary and elementary, close in time to the beginning in which the golden age of the history of mankind is situated. That which is old in the life of man is elementary and linked to a carefree childhood.

I don’t know when Robert’s interest in ‘that which once was’ surfaced. Without doubt his mother picked him up in her arms – and showed him the old trees. Without doubt, she said: “you are too heavy – I can’t carry you anymore”. She undoubtedly had the power to enchant the world.

I think Robert Koenig inherited the ability and power to enchant the world from her, to bewitch his dreams, converse with the spirits, create disquiet in the roughly hewn wooden figures of his ancestors, which he carries around the world with him.

Other people’s stories also stick to him.

Koenig accepted the task of predicting history, the guardian of memory. He talks with the spirits through his sculpture. He bows down over the russet letters with which dozens of names of his ancestors were written down. He works in haste before they turn to dust.

The Holy Grail is one of the most beautiful complex symbols of the world. The loss of the Grail is the loss of an inner link, whether that is a religious link or that of any source of happiness. That is why this loss – the loss of memory is also the loss of this elementary state. Grail at the same time means vessel or book. The search for the Grail is the search for a lost treasure and is contrary to the race of the “Cursed Hunter”.

I don’t know how much Robert knows about the cosmic Tree of Life but I know he is in its shadow.

In paradise there grew the Tree of Life but also the Tree of Good and Evil – or of recognition. The Tree of Life grew in secret. It was not possible to recognise it. Therefore Adam had no access to it until he approached the recognition of good and evil. The Tree of Life can give immortality, but it is not easy to reach. It is hidden like the herb of immortality that Gilgamesh searches for in the depths of the ocean or like the golden apples of the Garden of Hesperydes guarded by monsters.

Within the shadows of forgotten ancestors he bows his head before the great Tree of Life.

PROF. PIOTR JARGUSZ KRAKÓW, 20 JUNE 2005

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Places Odyssey didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reach There were a number of important places where, for a variety of reasons, the Odyssey carvings were unable to go.

They were there in spirit only...

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SPEYER – GERMANY Speyer Cathedral

“

It was Christmas Eve and we were all sitting on our bunks reminiscing about Christmas at

home. Stefanie who was the oldest and always praying said “Girls I’ve got a suggestion. Who will volunteer to go to midnight mass with me”? We were all a bit shocked as this was impossible.

Only five of us agreed to take the risk. So we arranged for one of the girls to watch the guard as he walked around the camp with a rifle. Two girls found some heavy metals bars and lifted the barbed wire fence up, and one by one we crawled under, even though it was very frightening.

If the guard would have turned around and seen us he would have shot us immediately. But we came out safely under a bush before we started to walk. The Cathedral was 15 minutes away.

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PLACES ODYSSEY DIDN’T REACH Another problem was we were supposed to wear a letter P on our lapel so that if we were caught by a policeman it would have meant we had escaped and we would be in big trouble. It was dark. We walked slowly and were so happy when we opened the church door. The Church was packed with German people. But at the door stood a Church man and he looked at us and said “Go away, you are not allowed in here”. But we ignored him and walked in. For us it was a very emotional moment, especially to hear the Christmas carol ‘Silent Night’ sung in German. We didn’t care when people looked at us as though we were from another planet. We felt so relieved to be at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Coming back we felt so happy we just couldn’t care less what would happen to us. We came to the same spot where the girls were waiting for us.

They signaled to us when it was safe to crawl back through the hole in the fence. We were so

”

elated and happy for a long time afterwards.

MARIA KÖNIG

This photo was taken a few months after arriving in the labour camp in Speyer in 1942. These were the girls in my Barrack no 2. I wasn’t in the photo as I was working the late shift in the factory. On arrival at the camp everybody was segregated. We were chosen for work as we looked strong and healthy. Others in the queue who looked old, weak and the children went to the concentration camps. The woman in the front row marked by the arrow was Zosia Wojciechowska. She was so caring and acted like a mother to us. She was later killed by a bomb. The woman third from the left on the back row is wearing my zig- zag design dress, which I had made during sewing classes in my village before the War. Everyone used to borrow it for the posed photographs that the Germans were keen on to give the Red Cross the impression that all was well in the camps.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY It took us a few hours by train to reach Speyer. It was night time when we arrived at a big camp surrounded with barbed wire. Our camp had 12 barracks and it was next to the aeroplane factory. We arrived in the middle of the night. There were 25 of us in our room, four to a single bunk, two up and two down. We got one blanket, one straw pillow, and a small wardrobe where we squeezed some clothes. In the middle of the room was a round stove with a pipe going through the roof. We were given one small bucket of coal a day.

In the morning the guard came in yelling orders. He said, “Tomorrow you get your numbers, you forget your name, you are a number!” I remember mine was 1129. Also he brought us a letter P that meant ‘Polish’ which was to be sewn on our lapel. In the morning we were separated. Some went to the tobacco factory, and 60 of us were taken for 6 months training to work later in the aeroplane factory as we were supposed to replace the Germans who went to the army. The training was very hard and difficult especially when the tutor was yelling at us in German and we didn’t understand a word he was saying , but we learned by fear. After training we were taken to a huge hall and learned to do a job, which was dangerous for unskilled workers. One of the girls had two fingers cut off by the machine, another was electrocuted and was killed. Many other accidents happened but the Germans didn’t care. For some reason I noticed that one of the Lagerfuhrers treated me exceptionally kindly. I thought maybe because I reminded him of someone. I was 21 years old but I looked more like a 10 year old, small and very slim. Maybe he felt sorry for me. He yelled at the others with a very loud voice, which was very frightening. Once he dropped a bundle of old clothes on the ground for everyone to grab. But he picked out one small coat and gave it to me. Also when the wooden clog shoes came in, he saved the smallest size for me as he knew I had very small feet. Another time I remember it was 8 December, my feast day. The Germans, like the Poles celebrate their feast days. I came back to the barracks from work and he had sent me a tray of lemonade for my feast day. Everyone was surprised as it was unheard of for a Lagerfuhrer to be so kind. We really enjoyed ourselves. We sat down on the floor and there was enough lemonade for everyone. We all pretended we were drunk and started singing. My thoughts were that there must be somebody from above taking care of me.

I worked with an electric bore machine on the wings of the aeroplanes. When I worked on night shift it affected my eyes. One time I was drilling a small part of metal, the bore machine went through my finger. In our place there were many nationalities of prisoners. I remember when the Germans had a break for tea they sat down and ate their sandwiches. One of them said “Wait I’ll show you something that will make you laugh”. He threw small pieces of bread on the floor and immediately five from our camp jumped on the floor to fight for the bread. The Germans had good laugh. I remember when a few of us went to the toilet to have a rest one of them pinched a cabbage from the gardener. We locked ourselves in the toilet and crunched the cabbage when suddenly the guards came and saw too many legs under one toilet cubicle. He shouted at us to get out. He pushed the door and five of us came out with the rest of the cabbage.

After a couple of weeks my eyes were so bad I couldn’t see what I was doing. I only saw two yards in front of me. I was afraid of what would happen to me if I was unable to work. A few of our girls who were ill disappeared and never came back. Our good friend Marta said “Girls don’t ask me what is happening to them but I advise you, try not to be ill”. They took me to a doctor who said I was unsuitable to work because of my bad vision. I remember panicking when I was taken out of the aeroplane factory because my eyes were so bad.

I expected to be taken to the concentration camp because I was not suitable for work, but I was very lucky, yet again that Lagerfuhrer helped me and arranged for me to work in the kitchen. Maybe I did remind him of his little sister or daughter. I was just relieved they didn’t get rid of me like the other girls who were too ill to work. There were two of us in the kitchen, the rest were Germans. The girls in the barracks were jealous and always asked us to bring some bread. But that was impossible. We were being watched all the time. We were hungry ourselves as they gave us only a small portion of food. The kitchen was for German workers and Hitler youth. Sometimes I had to throw away food in the dustbin, which I would have eaten myself. Many times an Italian prison worker stood outside and begged me not to throw away the food and to give it to him instead which I did until I was seen by the German cook. He said “If you do that again you will be sent away to the other camp!” Our friend Marta who was working as a translator tried to help us and asked the Lagerfuhrer for some clothes. She also told him as we were workers we shouldn’t have to starve, we should have some extra food. He went mad because she interfered too much. One day Marta came to our work to say goodbye. She was taken to a concentration camp. One of the guards said to us “Don’t worry, you can have her ashes”. We felt as though we had lost a mother. The barracks were filthy, full of

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PLACES ODYSSEY DIDN’T REACH cockroaches, flies and lice. From time to time the guards closed the barracks up and disinfected them with gas for three days, so we had to sleep outside on the grass. As the river Rhine was nearby, during the night there were millions of mosquitoes flying about. In the morning we woke up with bites all over our bodies, mostly on our faces. In the middle of the camp were the wash blocks where we could shower. However, there was a limit to the water we could use. You were given a small piece of carbolic soap and you had to be quick or you could just be in the middle of washing your hair when suddenly the water would stop and you would have to wipe yourself with pieces of rags. Your skin would burn from the smelly carbolic soap. Your hair would be left unrinsed. Sometimes we wondered what would happen next. Life was a misery. I lost all sense of time. I was only 21 years of age and living in constant fear. The air raids went on non stop and we had nowhere to hide as the shelters were only for the Germans. The worse was the starvation. For two years we only had one cup of black coffee a day and a couple of slices of bread. The piece of bread we were given in the evening was supposed to be for breakfast but it was so small and as soon as we got it we ate half of it and tried to save the other half for morning. In the middle of the night when there was an air raid I remember I grabbed the piece of bread and ate it just in case I may be killed and the bread would be wasted. At dinner time we would be given a small bowl of soup made of dirty potato peelings and some pieces of swede. It makes you wonder how you can survive for over three years without milk, vegetables, meat or any kind of fruit. The soup they gave us smelled of rotting vegetables and it was full of soil and sand gritting in your teeth. By the end of the war I weighed 25kgs. There were barracks of young boys aged 14 - 19 doing hard work. Being so hungry they picked some plastic from the rubbish bins and made combs to sell to us. I bought one to comb my greasy hair and I had to give them a few portions of bread out of my rations.

We had a small boy of ten who was with his mother. Many times he put his hat on upside down hoping not to be recognised so he could join the queue again for more soup. I wrote a letter to my Dad asking if he could send me some bread. A month later I received a letter and a parcel! What a joy!

My only letter in the camp from my father – October 2, 1943 Our Dear Marysia, Firstly we address ourselves to you. May Jesus Christ Our Lord Be Praised. We received your letter from which we found out about your health. Thank God that you are healthy and anymore is God’s will1. We cannot do more than ask Mother of the Rosary for Gods protection for You and for us. Mum asked for the Holy Mass to be said in your intention on Sunday, 17 October. The Lord Jesus and the Holy Mother will be your solace and assistance in your life. For your birthday card wishes for me, may God reward you. I am happy to have such a daughter, may the Lord give you the best that is possible. Here at home we are all healthy. We had quite a lot of work in the fields. We still have corn, rye and wheat to thresh. The weather is nice and the harvest, thank God, has been good. All is quiet and peaceful here. They are chasing the black marketeers somewhat. There is a shortage of footwear and clothing and if anybody brings any in it is very expensive. There is no fat anywhere at all apart from in Warsaw perhaps. Roza was there and said there is everything. But all would be fine if only the war would end and we could see each other again. I have a pain in my knee and I cannot work as I used to2.

You wrote before that a girl from Moszczenica died in the barracks. If you know her surname please let us know. We now have a dry spell and haven’t had rain all autumn. There is no snow yet. It is difficult to get shoes. Roza had some shoes made by Gasiak the shoemaker in Warsaw and paid 1500zl.3 Roza is at home.

On ending these few words to you we send you the best wishes from me, Mum, Roza, Jula, Zuzia and Mietek.

Writing the truth about how appalling the conditions were risked being sent to the concentration camp.

No one was to know that this pain in the knee was a direct cause of his death in 1945.

3 1500zl was a fortune in those days 1 2

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY God alone knows if we will see each other again. It can’t be helped if we have lived through to such times as these. May Gods will be done. They send you best wishes from Auntie Skwarło. May the Lord be with you. May He take you in his care. The Lord Jesus of Kobylanka and the Holy Mother of the Rosary, Your loving Father, We send our best wishes to your friends

After work I brought the parcel to my room and started unpack it. There was only one big farmhouse loaf as nothing else was allowed. All the girls surrounded my bed. I couldn’t help it. I cut the loaf slice by slice and gave each of them a piece. There was only a small piece left for me. My friend Wanda who worked at the beetroot factory said, “Maria, thank you very much, tomorrow I will bring you a beetroot from work”. Sadly when she came the next day she said “Maria, I am sorry I put a beetroot inside my vest and I was searched by the guards and he took the beetroot off me and beat me up.” My Father wrote me a letter to say that he was not allowed to send anymore parcels. But I had more cheerful news. My sister from Warsaw wrote that a friend of hers worked somewhere near us. He asked her to give him my address so he could write to me. After a short time I received a nice long letter and his photograph. What a handsome man!

I was very happy to receive this and what a romantic feeling for a change. I forgot for a moment about being hungry and showed the photo to my friends. He promised that we would meet in Warsaw after the war. But that never happened, I never returned.

Every week we had to march through the town with guards to have our hair cut. They used to put some smelly oil on our head and we had all our clothes disinfected. Every time they put our clothes through the disinfectant the clothes came out a different colour. The disinfectant was so strong I got a rash all over my body. Being just 20 years old I felt so embarrassed especially when German people looked at us from their balconies as if we were lepers. Our dream was to one day look like them with nice smart clothes. On that evening I remember we were so hungry Irena said, “Girls we will have a supper tonight”. She went in the dark to a dustbin and picked whatever she could find, cabbage leaves, peelings, anything edible. In our room we had a metal washing bowl. We cut all the scraps in small pieces into the bowl and put it on the stove to cook. Every time the guards were coming we quickly hid the bowl under the bed but eventually we managed to cook the soup. We had spoons so we were able to eat the soup. What a memorable supper that was!

Another time Cila who was always was looking for food saw the van delivering potatoes to the German canteen. She sneaked quietly behind the van hoping that some potatoes would drop. She managed to get a few potatoes but she came back with a big bump on her head from a guard. We had a little stove in the middle of the room with a pipe going through the roof so she cut potatoes in thin slices and stuck them around the stove. We all waited around the stove to get some. It was a luxury. Another incident I remember was on Good Friday 1943. In Germany Good Friday is a holy day so the factory was closed. We were so looking forward to having a rest. But in the morning the guards came marching in shouting “All out!” We were wondering where we were going. They took us outside the town to a huge stinking rubbish tip. We had to go in the middle of the tip and separate every item into boxes. It was horrible, smelly work and we had to work all day with nothing to eat until our evening soup. We never bothered when the siren went off and an air raid began. We thought we may as well be killed than starved to death and be miserable. Next morning as usual we got up for work when, suddenly, I felt like I was paralysed. I could not move from my bed. Everyone left for work and Joan said “Maria, what are you doing in bed. The guards will come and beat you up!” I said “Get me something to eat, I am so weak I can’t get up”. She said “Wait I’ve hidden some bread under my mattress. I’ll give you some”. That helped me a bit. I drank some water and eventually managed to go to work. We were always in fear of being ill. Those of us who were taken ill and couldn’t work disappeared and never came back. There was a casualty room in a barrack where a German male nurse worked. One day my friend Henryka and I went to see the doctor. Henryka had a septic finger and couldn’t

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BALCONIES IN SPEYER TOWN

operate the machine and I was very weak and had a high temperature. We were very frightened to go so we waited in the waiting room. Henryka said “You go first”, I said “No you go”. When Henryka went in I was listening by the door when suddenly I could hear her screaming, and I could hear chairs falling. That frightened me off so I ran out and went to work despite being ill. When we came back from work I asked her what had happened in the Doctors room. She said “You know, he took a sharp instrument and grabbed me and sliced all the septic part off and put some iodine over the wound and kicked me out. I was trying to fight him off me”. We never went to the sick room again. Also another unforgettable moment was when I felt so ill and weak I decided to stay in bed. The only problem was at 11am the guard searched every room to make sure everybody had gone to work. I locked myself in the wardrobe until he was gone.

Suddenly I heard the door open and two guards were checking the room. The next minute I heard them open a couple of wardrobes near where I was hiding. I was too frightened to even breathe. I nearly had a heart attack. But luckily they didn’t find me but by that time I was too scared to come out. I thought never again, I would rather go to work ill.

It was summer. I thought it would be nice to have a blouse. A couple of times the Lagerfuhrer brought some clothes from people who had gone to the Gas Chambers. He threw them to us. If you were lucky you would get a coat or dress. Some girls worked cleaning scraps from the aeroplanes with pieces of clothes, which were given to them. Being a dressmaker I asked one of the girls if I could have

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY some pieces of rags so that I could make myself a blouse. I promised her my portion of bread.

I remember I made a blouse from 10 small pieces of rags in different colours. But I treasured it.

The worse was when I desperately needed some kind of vest. One of the Russian girls said “I have one spare, I can sell it to you”. But she said she wanted 6 portions of bread for it. I didn’t know what to do as I would have had to be without bread for six days, but I was so desperate for something soft to wear under the rough dress material, that I agreed. I darned that vest many times with thread taken from cable wires. After 50 years I still have that vest as a memory of my starvation. We often discussed between ourselves how long the horrible war would last. The air raids were non stop, especially at night. We lay outside and watched the battle in the sky. Some girls were saying we would probably be killed and never find out what it was like to be in love. The other said “forget about love, my only wish is for somebody to give me a loaf of bread so I can die happy.”

Sometimes I wished I had a glass ball to see myself in the future, but there was nothing you could do but just live through it and hope you come out alive. One hundred of us young girls aged around 18 - 20 lived like one big family. We suffered together and we cheered each other up. Many times the alarm went. Suddenly the planes were so low I was sure they were photographing the main buildings. Sometimes we could read the names on the planes - it was in English, American and French. One day they dropped leaflets saying in many languages to all foreigners to try to keep away from the factory as there was going to be an air raid soon and the factory was going to be bombed. The next few days at every alarm the Germans ran away to their shelters and left us outside in the open air. One afternoon the alarm sounded because the siren never stopped. We knew there was the danger of an air raid. We had three small shelters opposite the airfield. We just managed to get in when after ten minutes silence we heard many aeroplanes flying our way. The noise was very frightening. There were ten of us in the shelter, which was the only safe place from the bullets. We just started to pray when suddenly the sound and tremors were like that of an earthquake. It lasted about five minutes. The force was so strong it threw us on top of one another, then there was silence again. We only heard barrels of petrol exploding nearby. We left our shelter but found the devastation almost unbelievable. The aeroplane factory was at last burning and we were surrounded by craters from the bombings.

The army and firemen tried to save the factory but it was destroyed completely. The soldiers who passed by could not believe we came out alive. In fact only one of us was killed when trying to reach a ditch. It was Stephanie, our dearest friend who took us to midnight Mass. She was our very best friend and about ten minutes before she was killed she wrote a letter to her brother in Poland. The effect of the air raid changed everything. I was still in shock and during the night I jumped from my bed and shouted “air raid!”. Everybody put their blankets on their heads and ran out before they realised it was a false alarm and I was just having a nightmare.”

MARIA KÖNIG

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PLACES ODYSSEY DIDN’T REACH Bischofliches Ordinariat Kleine Pfaffengasse 16 67346 Speyer

12/02/2009.

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, I am the British born sculptor Robert Koenig and I am based in the United Kingdom.

Since 1997 I have been developing a monumental woodcarving project entitled „Odyssey”.

Odyssey was originally an attempt to search for ancestral and sculptural roots by carving male and female figures out of lime trees that grew in my mother’s home village of Dominikowice in Poland. These figures were to represent my ancestors. 23 figures, each 2.5m tall, were carved in Poland. For the past 10 years they have been travelling, following a route significant to my family history and in particular to the journey taken by my mother in 1942. She left her home village in Poland, spent 3 years working in the Flugwerk in Speyer and ended up in Manchester, UK as a refugee. She died in Manchester in 2005.

The Odyssey carvings have been shown in Lwow in the Ukraine, in the Museum of Archaeology in Krakow, Poland and many cathedrals of Britain including Rochester Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Chichester Cathedral and recently in York Minster. During this time the public have accepted these figures as not only an artist’s search for roots but as an exhibition exploring important issues of migration, heritage, displacement, belonging and people’s place in the world. Odyssey represents many people’s experiences. It bears witness to past events.

The Odyssey carvings have been exhibited in the village where my mother was born in Poland and in the town in England where she died. The one place where they have not been shown and which is of great significance to my mother’s journey and to the „Odyssey” concept is Speyer.

I would like to ask if You would be interested in exhibiting the Odyssey carvings in Speyer Cathedral.

Robert Koenig

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY Domkapitular Peter Schappert Edith-Stein-Platz 8 67346 Speyer Germany Sehr geehrter Herr König, herzlichen Dank fur das Angebot der Ausstellung Ihrer Odyssey-Figuren fur den Speyerer Dom. Das Domkapitel hat in seiner Sitzung 11 Mai 2009 entschieden, die Ausstellung nicht in den Speyerer Dom zu ubernehmen.

Ihre Ausstellungsunterlagen senden wir Ihnen zu unserer Entlastung zuruck.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen i. A. Nicole Brendel Büro des Domdekans

The decision of the “Domkapital” to not take on your exhibition into the church was not reasoned when voting and has therefore no “official” reason.

What speaks for the church in my view is that the “Speyer Dom” is not an exhibition space but a church. The grace of the church is established by its total dedication to the mass and the holy service. It is therefore a holy building that was withdrawn from the profound. Any other use leads to a breach of the dedicated use. Even concerts or any other use that’s close to the service is to be disputed and to be carefully weighed up.

For this reason we only allow exhibitions in large gaps of several years and only if the exhibition relates directly to the intention of the church. From what you have described, your exhibition is of private and autobiographical nature and this is what stands against it.

We thank you for your understanding in our decision.

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LWÓW –UKRAINE Jara Wulecka 2004 I was interviewed by a journalist for one of the Polish Lwów newspapers. She took me to a place on the edge of the city where a group of Polish intellectuals and their children were executed in July 1941 during the Nazi occupation of the city. One of them was the well known writer Tadeusz Boy Zeleński. The victims were shot halfway up a steep slope. It was a difficult place to find with difficult access. It was one of the places I wanted to bring my carved figures to “bear witness” and remember. In the end, for practical reasons, it was not possible.

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PRZEMYŚLANY – UKRAINE In Search of Jan Dudek

THE CHURCH WHERE JAN DUDEK ATTENDED HOLY MASS AND WHERE HIS FUNERAL TOOK PLACE IN 1929

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PLACES ODYSSEY DIDN’T REACH In the summer of 2004 the sculptor Robert Koenig took his sculpture project “Odyssey” on a journey across the historical region of Galicia in South East Poland and the Ukraine following a route linked to his ancestors, the Dudek family.

(When in 1793 the Austro-Hungarian Empire invaded and annexed South East Poland the resulting province was named Galicia. When Poland regained its independence in 1918 Galicia became Polish once again with the mighty cities of Krakow in the west and Lwow in the east).

The tour involved exhibitions in Lwów in the Ukraine and Tarnów, Zakopane, Kraków, Gorlice in Poland. It also involved a private visit by the artist to the town of Przemyślany, east of Lwów.

The British documentary filmmaker Stephen Matthews followed Robert Koenig during his Galician Odyssey, filming his experiences and his attempts to uncover a family history unknown or forgotten, a 20 century history of this region of Europe.

23 carved limewood figures left Dominikowice, near Gorlice at the beginning of may

DESIGN FOR THE MAIN ALTAR OF THE PARISH CHURCH IN TARNOPOL COPYRIGHT: WOJTOWICZ

2004 heading for Lwów, in Western Ukraine. The exhibition, hosted by the ‘Lwowskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sztuk Pięknych’, was installed in the Palace of Art courtyard next to the Potocki Palace. The carvings were thus visible from the street.

Following in the footsteps of the artist’s uncle, the sculptor Jan Dudek, ‘Dziady’ arrived in a city where he also left his mark having, amongst other things, contributed to carvings made for the Cathedral of St. Jura in the City.

Through this spiritual journey Koenig was to make further attempts to uncover the life and

“

I can see the continuity between

your uncle Jan’s work and your

work. The figures you are sculpting are monumental like his, like the

”

figures on the altars

WOJTOWICZ KRAKÓW 2004

work of Jan Dudek in the 1920’s in this part of Galicia and to understand the history of this troubled region.

During the 2 weeks of the exhibition one day was chosen to take 13 of the carved figures around the city of Lwów, to bring them into direct contact with the public by arranging them for short periods on street corners and squares. They were then photographed and filmed with the artist responding to questions posed by the public.

During his stay in Lwów, Koenig travelled to the nearby town of Przemyślany to try to find the grave of his uncle Jan Dudek who died there tragically in 1929 at the age of 23.

Unfortunately the Polish section of the cemetery was badly neglected and vandalised and the grave was not found. With the help of the Polish parishioners in the town he was shown

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PROBABLE SITE OF THE WOJTOWICZ WORKSHOPS. A NUMBER OF ARTISTS AND CRAFTSMEN WOULD HAVE LIVED AND WORKED HERE, INCLUDING THE SCULPTOR JAN DUDEK. WHEN THE SOVIET ARMY INVADED, THE WORKSHOP WAS ABANDONED AND THE WOJTOWICZ FAMILY MOVED WEST TO KRAKÓW AND TARNÓW.

the buildings where Jan Dudek worked as a sculptor in the workshops of Jan Wojtowicz which produced carved altars for many churches in Galicia and beyond. When the Soviets took over that part of Poland during WW2 the workshops were abandoned and the workforce fled west. A workshop that produced artworks for churches was not going to be allowed to survive in a Soviet state that did not recognise the existence of God.

There was a huge workshop where many employees “worked, sculptors, painters…

But apart from that there was a building opposite where the workers lived…he built altars for churches. They were beautiful people. We got on very well with them…they visited each other.

”

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PLACES ODYSSEY DIDN’T REACH

THE WOJTOWICZ RESIDENCE. THE ARTISTS WOULD EAT THEIR MEALS IN THIS HOUSE TOGETHER WITH THE OWNERS.

“

I am 87 years old. And yet I remember everything, as if I could see that beautiful garden with

the dahlias, roses, because our window looked out on to the road. Mr. Wojtowicz’s house was by the path opposite. I even remember my professor from school, Mr. Kwietkowski , who taught Polish language and literature and who asked this question : “please tell us which flowers grow in Mr. Wojtowicz’s garden?”

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY I used to look at that beautiful garden daily with its flowers... and the order and tidiness there…

I looked and admired the lovely flowers…I got up and couldn’t name one flower. Why couldn’t I name even one? The professor was very handsome and I was his favourite pupil and he wrote in

”

the book “this pupil is not very observant.

SISTER MARIA LAHER (A NEIGHBOUR)

I spent two hours wandering around the cemetery in Przemyślany looking for the grave of Uncle Jan. I spoke to him in my mind asking him to direct me to his grave and to the statue erected in his memory. This section of the cemetery with graves from the 1920’s and 30’s, was badly neglected and overgrown. I couldn’t find him this time but promised myself I would return with a plaque with the original inscription from his funeral, which read: “Our star of the East, which shone over us, has been extinguished.”

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PARIS – FRANCE

THE INNER COURTYARD TO MY OLD SCHOOL.

The building was leased from the Irish government in 1945 in a dilapidated state. It was to house Polish clerics who had just been released from the Dachau concentration camp and who wanted to continue their studies towards priesthood. A secondary school for boys was created in 1953. I spent 7 years at the school in the 1960’s remembering for instance the student riots of 1968 and burning cars in front of the school. I remember my time in the school with great affection.

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ROBERT KOENIG – FIRST ROW, SECOND FROM THE RIGHT, 1964

Dear Madam, I am the sculptor Robert Koenig and am writing to ask if you would be interested in hosting my monumental woodcarving exhibition “Odyssey”.

I enclose a leaflet describing the Odyssey project.

Odyssey, in brief, represents my own spiritual journey as well as that of my mother who was taken from her Polish village to the slave labour camps in Germany during WW2. In general it also deals with issue of migration, displacement and the movement of peoples throughout the ages.

Odyssey has toured Poland, the Ukraine and the UK since 1997. It is time for it to return to mainland Europe. I am seeking an exhibition in Speyer, Germany – the site of my mother’s slave labour camp. The Odyssey figures “bear witness” to past events on a family level and on an international level.

The reason I am seeking an exhibition at the Centre Culturel Irlandais is that I was a pupil at the then Polish Seminary School between 1963-70. The place is in a sense one of my spiritual homes. Odyssey would be following my journey back to my early years of artistic development. It would be “bearing witness”. I made my first woodcarving at the school at the age of 15. ( I remember playing volleyball with the newly ordained cardinal from Krakow who was passing through on his way to Rome. His name was Karol Wojtyła – the future Pope John Paul II).

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PLACES ODYSSEY DIDN’T REACH One of the options during Odyssey exhibitions is to incorporate musical performances in amongst the Odyssey figures. They are often filmed and recorded on DVD. A film documentary is also continuously being made of the Odyssey journey with passages filmed in the Ukraine, Poland and the UK. Another option is the carving of a new Odyssey figure during the exhibition using a tree from the local area. This figure would in this case become the “Paris pilgrim” and would leave with the rest of the group after the exhibition. Since being created in Poland this crowd of carved people has started travelling through Europe. Odyssey has taken on a greater dimension and symbolises the great migrations of people throughout the ages.

The aim is to keep enlarging this group of 34 figures by carving one figure in each new exhibition venue out of a local tree trunk. Each city will then have an actual carved participant in this journey across Europe. It will create a sense of unity and solidarity between participating towns, cities and countries.

This project, which started out as a search for Polish ancestral ghosts has taken on a pan-European and universal dimension.

I enclose a catalogue of my work, a DVD trailer of the Odyssey film, a file of recent Odyssey exhibitions and some photos of my days as a pupil in 5, rue des Irlandais in the 1960’s.

Yours sincerely, Robert Koenig

Dear Robert Thank you for your letter and the accompanying information. Your project looks most interesting but I am afraid that it is not something for which I would have a budget here, despite your schoolday link with the Collège des Irlandais. May I wish you every success with it as you develop it and bring it through Europe.

Sheila Pratschke Directrice Centre Culturel Irlandais 5 rue des Irlandais 75005 Paris

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

SCULPTOR ROBERT KOENIG WITH SON JANEK, AT THE GRAND ENTRANCE TO HIS OLD SCHOOL FROM THE 1960’S, THE SEMINAIRE POLONAIS, NOW THE IRISH CULTURAL CENTRE, 2009.

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PLACES ODYSSEY DIDNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T REACH

ZAKOPANE â&#x20AC;&#x201C; POLAND â&#x20AC;&#x153;Palaceâ&#x20AC;?

One of the places I wanted to take the Odyssey figures in Zakopane was the Gestapo headquarters. I read about this place in the sleeve notes of a CD by the Polish composer GĂłrecki. The place was nicknamed the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Palaceâ&#x20AC;?. A Polish woman held in the Gestapo cellars wrote some words on the wall which moved me greatly. =DNRSDQH ´3DĂĄDFÂľ FHOD QU Ĺ&#x2019;FLDQD QU %ODĹŽXVLDNÇ?ZQD +HOHQD :DQGD ODW VLHG]L

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For practical reasons I was unable to place the carvings there but I superimposed photos of some of the figures onto a photograph of the entrance to the prison cells in order to be there in spirit and to bear witness to all that went on in there.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

I remember coming across several Gestapo headquarters in Poland. The one in Kraków was in a building which was later used as accommodation for music students and their families. I studied for a short while at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1983.

Whilst visiting a friend in this building I remember walking down the corridor and hearing a variety of sounds coming from the students practicing on their instruments. A haunting violin comes to mind very strongly. To hear such eerie and haunting sounds in a building that saw so much torture was difficult to come to terms with. Perhaps the music was a way of spiritually cleansing

164 the place.

Odyssey Exhibition 2006–09, Visitors comments.

ALL SAINTS CHURCH, HOVE, EAST SUSSEX – May 2006 This is so gorgeous! Sad and stunning....it says so much. The music reflects the sadness and determination in the statues’ faces, giving them life and a collective soul. Cold on the outside - bleeding on the inside - power in numbers. Powerful and haunting stuff.

Amazing, wonderful – an absolute pleasure!

Thank you for bringing your stunning work to be shared by others. I don’t often have the chance to dance with such immensity.

(Dancer at the opening at All Saints Church, Hove during the Brighton Festival 2006).

Though they tower over me, each face is so human. I feel like a child really seeing adults for the first time. You will make me want to look deeply at each face in a crowd.

Stunning the first time I saw them but even more powerful on the second visit.

It is a great privilege to have this exhibition here. (All Saints Church, Hove, East Sussex).

Man, I am bowled over by those sculptures. Haunted and haunting, bewildered and bold.

It changes the way I see the idea of ‘bearing witness’. I’ve always thought of it as a passive act, and ultimately doomed to a laudable grave but those expressions turn it into something of great power. The idea of changing thought and perceived history through the gaze.

We will always remember them.

CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL – April 2007 A stirring reminder of the tragedy of human conflict.

The sculptures spoke to me of a special gift that the sculptor has been given by God. Reading the Odyssey posters gave me a peaceful reassurance of life from God. Bravo Robert Koenig – great pathos and sensitivity in your work recalling Poland, and a privilege for all visitors to this lovely Cathedral to be able to come close to Your sculptures and your talent.

Showing all aspects of human kind and what it means to be human is what churches are for.

Thank you for showing this great spiritual gathering of people reminding us about ourselves.

Congratulations, it is beautiful. (Antwerpen).

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY These evoke a complex reaction: terror, longing, deprivation, some despair. I think of totemic figures and their power and of the human reverse of protection that we enforce on our fellow human beings.

What great art. You must bring them to New Zealand.

Stunning. One of the most emotional and beautiful art works I have experienced in many years.

The most exciting and uplifting experience on my odyssey. Thank you for your gift.

I am pleased to take part and observe the pilgrimage.

PORTSMOUTH CATHEDRAL – May 2007.

Very poignant and sad. Reflects feelings of forced immigration rather than the economic migrants of today.

A very intriguing and fascinating journey! May the journey continue in this wonderful way.

MILTON KEYNES CHURCH OF CHRIST THE CORNERSTONE – June / July 2007.

The figures have an “other worldly” quality, which is mesmerising. Each time I see them I am more intrigued.

An inspiring work that reminds me of the spiritual atmosphere of the Hill of Crosses in Western Lithuania. It was a pleasure to create music in response to the figures whose elongated shapes I tried to echo in the drone based lament I improvised.

You have inspired an afternoon of carving at my ‘Head, Brain Injury Group’ – “Headway” this afternoon. I have taken ‘chips off your blocks’ to therapy with.

Beautiful carvings, wonderful composition and angles representing stark reality. Brutally human.

Thank you for these carved icons for the Polish story and today’s stories that come to life as we speak – you have truly ’created a presence to represent the past’.

ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL – August 2007 I chanced by your pilgrims on Tuesday afternoon. Standing beside them made me feel like a child again; amongst a group of adults who stood in silence as if awaiting something – I know not what. I was drawn to the figure at the front, head thrown back and looking skyward. The uniformity of the group struck me. I was very moved and will remember them and you.

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ODYSSEY EXHIBITION 2006–09, VISITORS COMMENTS Lovely. The man seated looks sad. I had to hold his hand.

This spiritual space is a perfect setting for these thought provoking sculptures. We are all on a journey to find ourselves, sometimes we are misplaced on our physical and spiritual adventure. Thank you Robert for such beauty and for witnessing the “Odyssey” in such a beautiful setting.

There is a touching sense of sadness to these figures. Beautiful! Their journey is everyone’s.

Such a humbling experience.

Moving, beautiful and elevating.

The beautiful figures brought a lump to my throat.

A wonderful representation of our (Polish) sad history, something that only we understand and value. Bravo! (Poland).

What a striking addition to our Cathedral – they bring a feeling of peace and authority, well done Robert Koenig, may your journey continue.

The Cathedral is more impressive with these sculptures. Thank You Robert. (Italy) Hope Your journey brings you peace!

Beautiful and hugely moving – my second visit to look at them!

I found the sculptures serene and spiritual.

The statues I felt were a reflection of the depth to which hatred can sink, but they are not dead just a breathe away and we will be with them – for theirs is the eternal

STOCKPORT ART GALLERY – September 2007 I found the combination of the music and the solemn presence of the carved figures very moving. What a beautifully integrated idea – both healing on a personal level and an international one. Roots certainly go deep.

I found the whole experience of meeting the “travellers” on this epic odyssey fascinating and deeply moving. There is something timeless about them, their story is our story – mankind’s. It is particularly poignant to think that, each time they move on, their numbers have increased by one. An ever growing ‘Family of Man’.

The figures feel like the Gods and Goddesses of coolness. Deities of the iron age. It is no wonder you are searching for your roots. It is a time for spiritual awakening. People are searching for who they really are. You are not this physical costume, you are a soul filled with love, peace, strength, wisdom and happiness.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY I was sceptical but with the mass of solemnity, I was drawn – despite myself – to contemplate the effects of migration on my own mother’s family (also uprooted from Europe by war). It is her story but has had a tremendous effect on me. Now in my 60’s, I’ve only started to want to think about it. The comment in the film of living somewhere but not ‘belonging’ was her experience and my own. I have enjoyed this experience – something that should always be near a war memorial – as a protest!

Rooted to their place by invisible links from the past and into the future.

Beautifully simple and wondrous – uncanny links with my own history.

Robert it was a pleasure, I felt as though I was walking through a forest full of your family – how your mum’s life has touched us all!!

Very thought provoking – the trees around us certainly have many stories to tell and Robert has told one very important story, about one family and every family.

A wonderful moving project, the true heart of a man seeking his spiritual being from a beginning of a life of love, for God and family. I can feel the true undercurrent of his soul, the peace, the love he has found in this wonderful work.

I like the sculpture a lot more than I was expecting to – the anticipation and reservation mixed in body language and expression.

Sad, silent, longing, waiting uncertainly. How many emotions this exhibit evokes. Wholly moving.

It’s so moving and deep, like an ancient river of life.

Stunning, fearful and beautiful. Most interesting that the English carvings have a very different weight and quality to them. From ghosts to sentient beings.

Never have I felt so isolated and involved at the same time. It’s funny. Being borne witness to is freaky!!

The uniformity yet individuality of each figure suggests people under strict control, a sadness and dignity shines through. I felt an immense urge to walk amongst them.

I am moved and leave this exhibition in tears. I understand how the artist feels because I am also an immigrant. (Polish) An astonishing first impression. A captured feeling.

So solemn, so beautiful, so thought provoking, so impressive. I will remember my visit today for a long time.

The solemnity and gravitas of these figures are a faithful reflection of Poland’s (and Ukraine’s) tragic history in the 20th century.

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ODYSSEY EXHIBITION 2006–09, VISITORS COMMENTS Your idea of journey and going back to your roots and your mum’s village is just fantastic. I really think you’ve captured the true feelings of the people who lived and died and whether they wanted or not they just started and finished their journey of life. They probably wanted to speak about their happy and sad moments but never did or could. Here you are bringing them back to life; their spirits are screaming loudly when we are looking to their faces. Each of them look very settled, strong and confident in their feature. They are expressing their attitudes of life, death and existence.

I feel like they are my family, my cousins and my neighbours whom I had to leave and whom were killed and disappeared because of war. They are back now and they are telling me they are alive… (from Kurdistan) I loved this exhibition. My mother and her family were also forced from their land in Ireland.

I find it poignant and very moving.

I am so moved by the depth of feeling Robert must have, and of the cruelty in our beautiful world, which keeps on manifesting.

Extremely moving. Brings back memories of my Polish friends in London and their stories. I hope this brings a better understanding of today’s Polish population in England.

We came on a whim and found ourselves absolutely awed by the skill and inspiration of the sculptor. It leaves us with such an awareness of a connection with people and their history.

The most moving and emotional exhibition I have ever seen.

Great work, very moving. I really really like this, it’s breathtaking. Love looking at the figures.

An experience I’m glad not to have missed, made even better by knowing his grandfather had helped Jews.

SALISBURY CATHEDRAL – Jan/Feb 2008 When I was a small child in England in WW2 we had no home of our own for six years.

But in early 1946, when I was with my mother in Bushy park, Teddington I saw some very shabby people behind a wire fence. “Who are those”? “They are DPs” “What’s a DP?” “ A Displaced Person”. I have never forgotten those shabby people from somewhere in Eastern Europe and I give thanks for my life, for freedom, for security. The world is a sad and difficult place, but also beautiful and good. The Jews have a saying ‘Tikkun Olan’ – save one person and you save the world. God help us to live with that hope.

The figures, both individually and as a group convey magnificently the apprehensions and the dread of the victims of “ethnic cleansing” both during the ’39-45 war – and since.

Deeply moving and artistically a triumph.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY This “Odyssey” is still pending! For how long my nation will be forced to do this??? Poles.

Today is special Holocaust Service and your sculpture reflects the sadness but God has his hand on the people and cannot be destroyed.

The figures, the background, the movement of the ensemble…all making a memorable experience.

The best part of visiting this cathedral was finding this exhibition.

A truly epic work.

I find the exhibition grim and stern. Is it a Greek Chorus of “man’s inhumanity to man”?

Unforgettable and moving experience! Polish people’s history set in a context of English people’s history.

Calm but not passive, full of character, weary but not tired, somehow eternal, dignified, evoking conscience, together but always alone.

ST. JOSEPH’S CHURCH, CWMAMAN, SOUTH WALES – June 2008 Overwhelmingly beautiful.

The sculptures are sad but beautiful.

A wonderful evening. The documentary about Robert Koenig’s sculptures was very moving.

Thank you for this fantastic moment. (France).

These dramatic and thought provoking sculptures embody what is so powerful about woodcarving and are an inspiration to the higher self.

The sculptures touched my heart as I was in a similar situation to Robert. Very moving.

Such a privilege to come and play with the sculptures today. Thank you. (Cellist).

Odyssey – such a touching story, beautifully told.

Beautiful, stunning, breathtaking.

The sculptures are timeless and beautiful – the universal story of Odyssey that none of us can ever forget.

Such an impressive exhibition. A very moving experience.

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ODYSSEY EXHIBITION 2006–09, VISITORS COMMENTS

YORK MINSTER – September 2008.

A thought inspiring masterpiece. Beautiful and very touching.

Very powerful – dynamic stillness.

Hard to put into words the nature of this masterpiece. (Australia).

Great exhibition. I am proud that Robert Koenig is from Poland. (Polish visitor).

Very moving. Like a walking forest.

They look rather as though they have been in Auschwitz. Still, I’m glad to see a 2nd generation British Pole keeping up the connection.

Took my breath away.

An inspirational attempt to relate to a desperate time in our modern european history.

Thank you for making this available to all of us.

A compelling group, united powerfully in their common rigid but alert posture and diverse in their unique response to what they are witnessing. Fabulous. Will live in the memory.

Mind blowing exhibition.

We came, we saw, wow. (Canada).

It takes my breath away. I hope You find peace. (Australia) Very moving and beautiful. I would like to join them, they feel so life enhancing.

It touched my heart. (Germany).

This is incredibly beautiful work – of great insight into the human condition, quite quite wonderful and inspiring.

Interesting – all young people – immigrants? Or victims. Reminder of how many young people from Poland were lost during the Second World War. This is a deeply moving exhibition and the site is so appropriate. (Ireland).

Town Church, St. Helier, Jersey – May 2009.

Great to see a fine craftsman at work creating “something” out of “nothing” that everyone can admire.

Having visited Poland I recall seeing carvings of this nature; these are great and are to be admired.

They are very powerful and disturbing “watchers” or witnesses.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY Humbling, inspiring, sublime they carry for me the ray of spirit the ray of hope, of love and light.

Very emotional for some reason.

Your work is amazing. We really enjoyed your lesson. Hope you come again. (St. Lawrence School.)

Meditating with them has been most soothing. Thank you for the opportunity.

An inspiration! Many thanks for bringing them to Jersey. (Sarah, ITV Channel Television.)

The figures work so well close together in an intimate space and the colours are so medieval. They are perfect for the church.

Really interesting exhibition especially with the sculptor explaining how and why the journey started – he made it humorous, which is brilliant with school trips.

Very interesting. It is amazing what you can do with wood. Thank you for letting us come.

We promise we won’t tell the German ambassador that we saw it first, ha, ha. It was an amazing school trip. Thank you. (Beaulieu School).

“Rough hew them as you will”. Silent testimony to the fact that the past carves us and we must all bear witness to it.

Love the various “attitudes”, good tension emerges - strong emotions held in. Marvellous.

Terrific exhibition, highly original, long may they travel!

The DVD made me cry. These sculptures show all our humanity. Thoughtful, sensitive work.

Music beautiful.

Wonderful exhibition. The figures have a powerful presence, a humbling experience.

A truly amazing expperience and a lasting tribute to the millions of people who were persecuted.

Belles statues, que Le Seigneur nous donne la lumiere.

Thank you for allowing us to tell the very moving story here in Jersey and to display Odyssey, which resonates with the culture and story of the people of Jersey. (Jersey Sculpture Trust.)

Worcester Cathedral – August 2009.

So pleased we visited today. Wonderful, thought provoking art. My father came from Lwow and settled in England after WW2.

What an inspiring project – an amazing sight and extremely creative conception.

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ODYSSEY EXHIBITION 2006–09, VISITORS COMMENTS A wonderful idea – thank you for explaining it to us as you worked(Spain).

Fantastic journey, they hold a resonance of life to them. Amazing! (Eire) Inspiring. They have a power and speak a message. Stillness and serenity.

Amazing sculptures. Met the artist Robert Koenig. Very interesting visit today. I will remember it.

Very emotional story and imposant art. (Netherlands) Ich versteh das nicht. I don’t get it. (Germany) Feast of St Oswald – 4 August 2009 AD. Only one word for all this statuesque magnificence – “gorgeous”.

The violin playing at the opening seemed to bring the figures alive. For me that was a moving moment – their silent still openness and listening.

I got touched by the message. ((Barcelona, Spain).

As an Irish immigrant I fully appreciate the sentiment of these figures. Haunting, beautiful.

Well done.

Your figures are wonderful and have inspired me to find my mother’s ancestors (originally from Lwow) Moving and exciting (Madrid, Spain).

Spiritual with such deep emotion – a journey of discovery we relate to. Thank You. Very lively and full of history. (France) I knew my grandmother, but will my grandchild’s grandchildren know me? Thank you for portraying everyone’s family.

My father Stanislaw Mysliwy had to flee Poland as a 16 year old during the early part of WW2. He later migrated to Australia and began a family there. Out of tragedy a rebirth.

The “Odyssey” speaks to me of my roots also. Thank you.

Really beautiful. Oso polita. (Basque country).

Am reading Sue Ryder’s autobiography in which there is much about the camps and atrocities of World War 2. A monument full of life and hope.

What an amazing exhibition. May this cathedral still give glory to God and His Son for many more years.

Incredibly moving. My mind needs time to absorb it.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY Outstanding treasure find to find a connection between Krakow and Worcester.

Moving – gave me peace.

Amazing, so lucky to have seen them and read the story.

Very moving. The interplay between anonymity and individuality is very striking.

Great, very moving and beautiful. My family come from Sweden and Finland and it would be great to make something like this, not that I know much about them.

What an inspiration to set this exhibition with the costume one, it’s brilliant and sensitive.

The wood has been reborn back to life but still as a forest.

Great concept – I thought of a Greek chorus as soon as I walked in – like a collective consciousness. (Dubai, UAE).

By making the carvings simple the importance of ordinary people is emphasised.

My ancestors were Irish refugees from the famine, my husband’s family Polish refugees to America. His sculpture reminded me of this and moved me deeply. Jesus was a refugee in Egypt.

I am overwhelmed, moved to tears. What a beautiful and apt hommage to his parents and family.

How wonderful – my daughter-in-law comes from Polish immigrants – I can relate this exhibition to her stories.

Thank You Worcester Cathedral for showing such an interesting and deeply thoughtprovoking project.

I like the project. I find it absorbing, also interesting to wonder about the relationship between rhythm and aesthetics.

Very privileged to have seen them – so glad I came into the cathedral today.

What a truly impacting project – I felt the energy emanating from the figures even before I read their history – tingling and provoking.

I’m so glad I was drawn into the Cathedral, where I love, and saw these figures at the start of an odyssey of my own. Thank you for bringing them here and thank you for making another. Bless your new child.

The Odyssey reminds us of the dilemma, heartbreak, courage and vision of those who, for whatever reason, leave their homeland.

Stunning and remarkable – can we learn from the past for the here and now?

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ODYSSEY EXHIBITION 2006–09, VISITORS COMMENTS Particularly interesting for me, my wife knows the area where Robert Koenig came from and also Lwow where many of the sculptures were shown.

Very evocative of emotions unrecognised within myself. Wonderful creations.

Remarkable and disturbing meditation.

Intriguing and thought provoking exhibition. Clearly something to inspire and remind us of human frailty and human love.

Carving in Public Great to see such large sculpture in Portsmouth Cathedral. Enjojed chatting to the sculptor and seeing him work.

Fascinating exhibition and talking to the sculptor about its origins gave much insight.

Your work deserves time and contemplation. Thank you. We enjoyed talking to you.

Fantastic sculpture– lovely story – so pleased – so pleased to have met and spoken to Robert Koenig – clever man!

Thank You Robert – one day I will take over your job! (Helena age 14.)

Thank You for Your kindness to my husband after his fall. The figures are amazing and so life like. Well worth a visit.

Fantastic to have the chance to hear the sculptor talking. Brought his figures even more to life.

I liked it very much because it is helping my art course work. It is very interesting and very clever how you done these sculptures. I wish I spoke to you and maybe had a go and had a better idea, I missed you by 20 minutes. Thank you. (Christian age 14.)

They are really good and I hope you come to Milton Keynes again and I hope I can watch you make them! (Tom, age 9) A truly moving experience to see, to listen, to wonder. Thank you.

A fascinating exhibition. Good to watch art in the making and to talk to its creator about how the idea began and the journey of the figures. Art for the people. Great.

We saw the Rochester figure being carved and were very impressed when we returned to see her standing at the back of the group. Well done Robert.

Fascinating, especially listening to the artist.

Amazing, absolutely amazing. I feel humbled to have met Robert also. I love it.

Lovely sculpture, very good experience to actually meet and talk to the sculptor as well.

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Galician Shadows The “Galician Shadows” series was inspired by Robert Koenig’s visit to Lwów and Przemys´lany in western Ukraine in May 2004 where he toured his sculpture project “Odyssey”.

Each Galician Shadow drawing is a visual response to the sights of Lwów, an emotional response to the dramatic stories heard by the artist from people who experienced the War, the invasion of the Nazis and then the Soviets to this Polish city. Such witnesses were, amongst others, the de Zappe sisters who were descended from an officer in Napoleon’s army that marched on Moscow.

During Napoleon’s retreat the officer turned south, married a Polish woman and settled in Galicia. (After WW2 Lwów became part of the Soviet Union and is now part of an independent Ukraine).

The basis of this particular Galician Shadow drawing is a section of an ornamental iron railing in the compound of the Cathedral of St. Jura. The darkness of the bog oak dust used to make out the image depicts the dark shadow of a dramatic history of this city. The copper leaf celebrates the magnificence of the architecture of the city of Lwów. This city is an undiscovered jewel with so many buildings from every architectural period. Any admirer of Prague or Krakow should visit Lwów.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY The bog oak dust used in “Galician Shadows” is thousands of years old. It came from timber that fell into marshland, sank slowly and was finally buried. Low ph levels in the water acted as a preservative, effectively preventing the wood from rotting.

Depending on the conditions and the time under water, bog oak can attain a jet-black hue similar to ebony.

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ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

Robert Koenig – Further information Born in Manchester 1951.

2008- Waitrose Store, Manchester

Based in Hove, East Sussex

2008 Qiushan Castle, China

QUALIFICATIONS 1978 Higher Diploma, Postgraduate Sculpture, Slade School of Art, London 1976 BA Hons, First Class, Fine Art, Brighton Polytechnic

COMMISSIONS

2008 Kinterbury Creek, Plymouth 2008 Royal Latin School, Buckingham 2008 St Joseph’s Church, Cwmaman, Wales 2009

Tesco Store, Havant, Hampshire

2010 Red Lodge Village, Suffolk 2011 Parks Trust, Campbell Park, Milton Keynes 2011 Caerphilly Council, South Wales

1986 Telford Development Corporation

RESIDENCIES/workshops

1987 Nuffield Orthopaedic Hospital, Oxford

1982 Resident Sculptor – Grizedale Forest, Cumbria

1987 SAAB UK. Ltd

1983 Polish Government Postgraduate Scholarship

1987 Free Trade Wharf, London Docklands

1984 Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club

1989 Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford

1986 Brookside Middle School, Telford

1989 Leicestershire Education Council

1986 Milton Keynes Community Workshop Trust

1989 St Bede’s Church, Newport Pagnell, Bucks

1986 Resident Artist, Rufford Country Park

1990 Milton Keynes Hospital

1987 Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport

1990 Stockgrove Country Park, Bedfordshire

1987 Belvoirdale Primary School, Coalville, Leics.

1991 Milton Keynes Development Corporation

1989 Cobden County Primary School, Loughborough

1991 St. Mary’s Hospital, Kettering

1989 Wyvern Primary School, Leicestershire

1991 NCC. East India Dock, Wapping, London

1990 Stratton Upper School, Biggleswade, Beds.

1993 Perton Library, Staffs

1990 East of England Show, Peterborough

1994 Priory Country Park, Bedford

1991 St. Peter’s Cof E Primary School, Whetstone,

1995 Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport

1992 Alex Campbell School, Bletchley, Bucks

1995 Dairsie Castle, Fife, Scotland

1994 St Paul’s School, Woughton, Milton Keynes

1995 Oxford St. Roundabout, Bilston, West Midlands

1994 Linford Combined School, Milton Keynes

1996 The Clere School, Burghclere, Berkshire

1994 Bradwell Village School, Milton Keynes

1997 Vine’s Gardens, Rochester

1994

1999 Brierley Forest Park, Notts.

1995 The Clere School, Burghclere, Hampshire

1999 St. Edwards School, Sherfield English

1995 Bilston Art Gallery, West Midlands

1999 Hovercraft Celebration, New Forest District Council,

1996 North Kidlington C.P. School, Kidlington, Oxon

Hythe, Hampshire

College de Trion, Samer, France

1996 The Clere School, Burghclere, Hampshire

1999 Loughborough Town Hall, Leicestershire

1996 Libusza School, Libusza, Poland

2000 Langthorne Park, Leytonstone, London

1999 St Edwards School, Sh erfield English, Hants.

2000 Chatelherault Country Park, Hamilton, Scotland

2000 Community Project, Rutherglen, Glasgow

2002 Chart Rd. Roundabout, Ashford, Kent

2000 Buchan Country Park, Horsham

2002 South Park, Redbridge, Essex

2001 St.Edwards School, Sherfield English, Hants.

2003 Bargoed Gateways Project, South Wales

2001 Great Chart School, Singleton, Kent

2003 Wiveliscombe Gateway, Somerset

2003 Brookside School, Bicester, Oxon

2004 Brookside School, Bicester, Oxon

2006 Cherry Tree Primary School, Basildon, Essex

2004

2006 Bardfield Primary School, Basildon, Essex

Miners Memorial, Bargoed Country Park

2006 Wat Tyler Country Park, Essex

2006 De La Salle Secondary School, Basildon

2007 Blagdons Meadow, Plymouth

2007 Prince Rock Primary School, Plymouth

2007 Hove Progressive Synagogue, East Sussex

2008 Royal Latin School, Buckingham

200

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 2009 Harlow Playhouse

COLLECTIONS

2010 Tuddenham Primary School, Suffolk

Arts Council of Great Britain

2011 Carden Primary School, Brighton 2011 Westdene Primary School, Brighton 2011 Coldean Primary School, Brighton 2011 Patcham Junior School, Brighton 2011 Patcham High School, Brighton

Northern Arts Association Leicestershire Education Authority The Gibberd Garden, Harlow, Essex Rufford Country Park Harlow Health Centre Milton Keynes Community Workshop Trust

ARTICLES/REVIEWS

Leicester Royal Infirmary

Artscribe No 13

1978

Arts Review

26.09.80

Arts Review

02.07.82

Arts Review

Dec. 1984

Aspects

Spring 1983

Aspects

July 1984

EXHIBITIONS

Studio International

May 1983

Architectural Review

Sept. 1985

1977 A Matter of Degree - South East Arts - Touring

Arts Review

28.02.86

Craft No. 81

1986

Arts Review

July 1986

Landscape Design

Dec. 1987

Arts Review

11.03.88

Arts Review

April 1992

Woodcarving No. 8

1994

Woodcarving No. 18

1995

Landscape Design

1996

PUBLICATIONS ‘Open Air Sculpture in Britain’ - Zwemmer/Tate Gallery ISBN 0 302 02749 1 ‘A Sense of Place’ – Sculpture in Landscape – Coelfrith Press ISBN 0 904461 85 8 ‘The Grizedale Experience’ – Cannongate Press 1991 ISBN 0 86241 354 0 ‘Art in Public’ – AN Publications ISBN 0 907730 18 3 ‘The Encyclopaedia of Sculpting Techniques’ – John Plowman, Quarto Books ISBN 0 7472 1278 3 ‘Start Sculpting’– John Plowman, Quarto Books ISBN 1 85348 960 3 ‘Natural Order’ – The Grizedale Society, 1996 ISBN 0 9525450 5 5 ‘The Art of the Woodcarver’ – GMC Publications ISBN 1 86108 011 5 ‘At The Edge Of Centuries’ – catalogue – essay by Craigie Horsfield –1997 ‘Dziady’ – catalogue – essay by Jerzy Madeysk 1997 ISBN 83-904836-6-1 ‘Robert Koenig – Sculpture – catalogue – 2002

Pearl Assurance, Peterborough Commission for New Towns, Milton Keynes Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury Wspolnota Polska, Nowy Sacz, Poland

‘Tree’ Exhibition - Chicago, USA Polish Cultural Institute, London (One Man Show) 1979 Centaur Gallery, London Amnesty International Sculpture Show, London ‘Wood’, Yorkshire Sculpture Park 1980 Serpentine Gallery Summer Show, London 1982 London Wood Partners Gallery, London One man show Whitechapel Gallery Open, London Norfolk House Artists, Lewisham Concert Hall, London 1983 ‘Some Sculpture Now’, Brighton Polytechnic Gallery Tolly Cobbold/Eastern Arts 4th National Exhibition (touring): Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich Museum of Modern Art, Oxford Barbican Art Gallery, London Talbot Rice Art Centre, Edinburgh Leeds City Art Gallery ‘Views and Horizons’, Yorkshire Sculpture Park Greenwich Theatre Gallery, London (Solo) ‘Ten Artists’, South London Gallery Norfolk House Open Studios, Deptford 1984 Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool Royal Institute of British Architects, London Sunderland Arts Centre Contemporary Art Society Market, Five Dials Gallery, London Paton Gallery, London – 1984 Norfolk House Open Studios, Deptford, London 1985 Harlow Playhouse, Harlow, Essex Consort Gallery, Imperial College, London

201

ODYSSEY (1997–2012), A SCULPTOR’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY 1985 Woodlands Art Gallery, Greenwich, London Rufford Sculpture Show, Rufford Country Park, Contemporary Art Market, Smiths Galleries, London Paperworks, Constructions, Textiles, Art for Offices 1986 Hannah Peschar Gallery, Garden Sculpture Show, Ockley,

Galeria Forma & Colour , Warsaw, Poland 1992 Rufford Country Park, Notts. – (solo show) ‘Foreign Bodies’, Huddersfield Art Gallery ‘Temple & Portals’, Milton Keynes Exhibition Gallery

Surrey

(one man show)

Whitechapel Gallery Open, London

‘From a Ladies Cherishings’, - Bury St. Edmunds Gallery

Bretton Menagerie, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

‘Out of the Greenwood’, - Oxfordshire County Museum,

Artists in Industry (West Midlands), (touring):

Woodstock (one man show)

Stoke on Trent Museum and Art Gallery

Little Brickhill Sculpture Walk, Bucks.

Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry

Contemporary Art Society Market, Smiths Galleries, London

Wolverhampton Art Gallery

‘Goal’, - Visionfest, Senate House Gallery, Liverpool

Walsall Art Gallery

‘Temple & Portals’, - Middlesborough Art Gallery

1986 National Garden Festival, Stoke on Trent Works in Wood, Rufford Country Park

(One Man Show) 1993 Midsummer Art Show - CBX, Milton Keynes

Middlesborough Art Gallery

‘The Face Fits’, Middleton Hall, Milton Keynes

The Great Barn, Milton Keynes (One Man Show)

RIBA Sculpture Court, London (solo show)

Contemporary Art Society Market, Smiths

Contemporary Art Society Market, Smiths Gallery, London

Galleries, London

Contemporary Bucks Artists, Stowe School

1987 Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester (solo) Shropshire Artworks, Telford College, Shropshire British Relief Woodcarving, (touring):

‘Boxed Art’, High Wycombe Museum 1994 Art 94, London Contemporary Art Fair Black Boy Gallery, West Wycombe

Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport

Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden, Ockley,

The Elizabeth Art Gallery, Wakefield

‘Carmen and Other Stories’, High Wycombe Museum

Bury St. Edmunds Art Gallery

(one man show)

D.L.I. Museum and Arts Centre,

Midsummer Art Show, CBX, Milton Keynes

Durham

‘Future World’, Milton Keynes

‘Drumscroon’ Wigan Education Art Centre, Wigan

Leighton Buzzard Arts Centre

Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead, Wirral

‘Narrative Woodcarving’, (touring): Bedale’s Gallery,

Radcliffe Royal Infirmary, Oxford

Steep Petersfield

Contemporary Art Society Market, Smiths

Eurosculpture Festival, Carhaix, Brittany, France

Galleries, London 1988 Shaw Theatre, London (One Man Show)

1995 ‘Narrative Woodcarving’, (touring ) [Banbury Museum, Winchester Gallery

Exhibition Gallery, Milton Keynes, Bucks

Ruthin Craft Centre Gallery

Contemporary Art Society Market, Smiths Galleries, London

The Gantry, Southampton]

1989 Critic’s Space V, Air Gallery, London Contemporary Art Society Market, Smiths Galleries, London 1990 Le Carre de l’Eglise Art Festival, St. Tropez, France

Art Aid, 77 Cornhill, London ‘1812’, High Wycombe Museum Midsummer Art Show, CBX2 Milton Keynes

‘Mysteries, Shrouds and Echoes’, Abingdon County

Le Chat Noir Gallery, Mayfair, London

Museum, Oxfordshire

‘Landings’, Bucks County Museum, Aylesbury

Lincolnshire Sculpture Project Gallery, Mawthorpe, Lincs.

The Orangery, Rufford Country Park, Notts

CAS Market, Smiths Gallery, London 1991 ‘On Uncommon Ground’, Cartwright Hall, Bradford

‘Trees’, Six Chapel Row Contemporary Art, Bath 1996 Apsidal Gallery, Rufford Country Park, Notts (one man show)

‘Shifting Perspectives’, Brixton Art Gallery, London

Midsummer Art Show, CBX2, Milton Keynes

Little Brickhill Sculpture Walk, Bucks

‘No Visa Required’ – Polish Cultural Institute, London

Carvings in Colour, Rufford Country Park CAS Market, Smiths Gallery, London

202

1991 President’s G allery, B ranicki Palace, Warsaw, P oland

1997 ‘At the Edge of Centuries’, Bucks County Museum, Aylesbury (one man show)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 1997 Dwor Karwacjanów Gallery, Gorlice, Poland

Secret Garden, Spetchley Park, Worcester

(one man show) ‘No Visa Required’ - Polish Cultural Institute, London

Richard Attenborough Centre, Leicester 2006

Aldeburgh Festival, Hill Lodge, Aldeburgh South Bank Banner Festival, London - (prizewinner)

All Saints Church, (Prizewinner) 2007

1998 ‘Dziady’ Galeria Pasaz, Tarnow, Poland (one man show)

2000 2001

2003

Castle Arts Centre, Wellingborough

Bedford Library Gallery

“Outside/Inside” – Gibberd Gallery, Harlow

Dunstable Library Gallery (one man show))

Cwmaman Sculpture Symposium, Wales

‘DoveTales’, Rufford Craft Centre, Notts

Hailsham Arts Festival, East Sussex

Aldeburgh Festival, Aldeburgh

Odyssey on tour:

‘Sticks’, Southern Arts Touring Exhibition,

Chichester Cathedral

Yew Tree Gallery, Slad, Glos.

Portsmouth Cathedral

Horsham Arts Centre, (One Man Show)

Church of Christ the Cornerstone,

Michelham Priory, Hailsham, East Sussex

Milton Keynes

‘Towards the Millennium’, ArtSway – Sway Hampshire

Rochester Cathedral

Worthing Museum (one man show)

Stockport Museum and Art Gallery

‘Gift of Art’, Horsham Arts Centre

Chadkirk Chapel, Romiley, Cheshire

‘Relics of Memory’. East Kilbride Arts Centre (one man show)

Museum of Hatting, Stockport

Garden of Art, Delvyns Farm, Gestingthorpe.

2002

2008

Polish Art, Brighton Fringe Festival

20 year Retrospective Exhibition,

ODYSSEY, York Minster

Cadzow Gallery, Hamilton, Scotland

ODYSSEY, St Joseph’s Church, Cwmaman,

Otter Gallery, University College, Chichester

South Wales.

(One Man Show)

Arundel Cathedral, Sussex

‘Fresh Air 2003’ Quenington Sculpture Show

North Gallery, Hailsham 2009

2005

ODYSSEY, St. Helier, Jersey

Brighton Festival, Open House

ODYSSEY, Worcester Cathedral

“Galician Odyssey” – ‘Dziady’ project on tour:

“The Culture of Wood” Gibberd Gallery,

Palace of Art, Lwow, Ukraine

Harlow (retrospective)

“Art on a European Street”, Tarnow, Poland

“Trees, Woods, Land and Sea”. Obsidian Art

Gallery Strug, Zakopane, Poland

“The Art of Sport”. Orleans House Gallery,

Museum of Archeology, Krakow, Poland

Twickenham, London.

Space Gallery, Krakow, Poland

Caerleon Arts Festival, South Wales.

Dwor Karwacjanow Gallery, Gorlice

North Gallery, Hailsham Arts Festival

Poland 2004

ODYSSEY, Salisbury Cathedral

Symposium in Gorlice, South East Poland.

‘Encounters’. Sussex Open, Brighton Museum

2004

Barbican Library, London Royal Society of British Sculptors, London

‘At the Edge of Centuries’ : ( Leighton Buzzard Library Gallery

1999

ODYSSEY, Brighton Fringe Arts Festival,

Godinton House, Godinton, Kent

Artisan, Lewes, East Sussex 2011

“A Decade of Sculpture in the Garden”.

Brighton Art Fair

Harold Martin Botanic Garden, Leicester.

Arthouse Gallery, Brighton

Brighton Festival Open House Exhibition

Barn Gallery, Henley on Thames

Restoration House, Rochester

Caerleon Sculpture Symposium, South Wales

Exhibition of Sculpture, thecentre:mk. Milton Keynes

“In The Shadow of The Tree of Life”POSK Gallery, King St. London

Work in public and private collections in United Kingdom,

“Sculpture in the Planning,

USA, France, Italy, Sweden and Poland.

Sculpture in the Making”.

Atkinson Gallery, Millfield, Somerset

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204

To my mother, Maria, whose personal journey will forever be an inspiration.

Her journey has been my Odyssey.

To my wife, Regina, whom I first met in Dominikowice at the start of the “Odyssey” project in 1996, and who has sacrificed much during my spiritual journey.

To my sons, Janek and Adam; my roots are their roots.

To my sister, Barbara, who over 15 years, has criss-crossed Europe to tirelessly photograph and document Odyssey’s steady march.

To Jadwiga and Philip Adey, whose help with this catalogue has been immeasurable.

To Zdzisław Tohl, Director of the Dwory Karwacjanów and Gładyszów Museum in Gorlice, Poland who gave Odyssey its first ever showing in 1997 and without whose help and support the Galician Odyssey tour to Lwów in the Ukraine, Tarnów, Zakopane, Gorlice and Kraków in Poland in 2004 would not have been possible.

Photography: Barbara König, Robert Huk, Gill Orsman, Kippa Mathews, Gary Weston, Phil Yeomans, Russell Sach, Robert Bloomfield, Pauline Neild, Craigie Horsfield.

Texts: Prof. Jerzy Madeyski, Prof. Piotr Jargusz, Prof. W. Kunz, Milena Adaszek, Agata Peksa, Ruth Dickinson, Robert Koenig.

Design by: Julie Stevenson, Creative by Design, Oxford, UK

Odyssey celebrates its 15th year on tour with a showing at St Martin in the Field, Trafalgar Square, London between March 19 – July 20, 2012 and the Bow Methodist Church, London between July 23 – September 4, 2012.

IBC

Odyssey

ODYSSEY

ROBERT KOENIG

Robert Koenig was born in Manchester, England in 1951 of Polish immigrants. In 1978 he graduated from the prestigious Slade School of Art at the University of London where he specialised in sculpture. Since that time he has been living and working in England as a professional sculptor.

Robert has been visiting his mother’s home village of Dominikowice in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in South East Poland since 1971. During these visits he has always tried to make sense of family history and find his own place within it. In 1996 he felt ready to confront these issues of ancestry, belonging, family history and tradition. In order to do this he undertook his major sculpture project ODYSSEY. The ODYSSEY project involved carving a large group of male and female limewood figures out of lime trees that grew in and around the area in which his mother was born and grew up. They would be trees that had their roots where he had his, trees under whose canopy his mother would have played and worked. These trees bore witness to the many dramatic events that shaped the lives of the people in the village over the past 100 years.

Odyssey

The trees were carved in the village in Poland, away from the artist’s English studio. It was important for the integrity of the project to create the carvings, which represented these ancestors, in amongst the very fields in which they worked for generations, to be open to any influences, energies and inspirations which working in such an environment could bring.

Robert Koenig spent long periods in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2001 in the village where he managed to carve 23 figures. They were carved quickly, intensively and roughly, retaining all the chisel marks. Their proportions were elongated and with their arms by their sides they were designed to look as if they were recently and suddenly pulled out of the ground. All the figures have similar upright poses to accentuate a certain primeval rhythm when assembled together. They represent nobody in particular but all the ancestors who lived and worked on the land.

This crowd of carved people travelling through Europe is taking on a greater dimension and is symbolising the great migrations of people throughout the ages.

In 2006 Odyssey was brought over to the United Kingdom and has been touring galleries, cathedrals and churches. In each new venue Robert tries to carve a new figure, which represents the place but which joins the main group on its travels. By 2011 40 Odyssey figures have been carved.

Robert Koenig

ODYSSEY is not just an exhibition of woodcarvings, but is primarily a travelling installation, a performance, a project which is continuously developing and augmenting in the public gaze. The public is witness and participant to the ODYSSEY journey which has stretched from the steps of the Cathedral of St Jura in the city of Lwów in the Ukraine, through the fields, mountains and valleys of Southern Poland, the Cathedral steps in Chichester to a grave in a cemetery in North Manchester.

Robert Koenig

www.robertkoenig-sculptor.com