Piotr Skrzynecki, Kraków

This bronze monument on Kraków’s Main Market Square portrays Piotr Skrzynecki at a small table outside the Kamienica Pod Blachą. It recalls the founder of Piwnica pod Baranami in the Vis-à-Vis garden corner that served as the cabaret’s informal office and artists’ meeting place.

Here, outside the Kamienica Pod Blachą at Main Market Square number twenty-nine, the bronze monument shows Piotr Skrzynecki seated at a little table. He founded Piwnica pod Baranami, the cabaret whose artistic direction he also led; he worked there as a director, scriptwriter, and master of ceremonies. The table recreates his favourite corner of the Vis-à-Vis drink bar garden, a spot that became Piwnica’s unofficial office and a meeting place for its circle of artists.

Skrzynecki was a choreographer, director, and cabaret impresario, so this relaxed figure represents a life built around bringing performance and people together. Deliberately ordinary the setting is: rather than placing him on a lofty pedestal, the memorial puts him at the kind of table where an evening’s conversation might begin. Krystyna Borkowska-Niemojewska and Łukasz Niemojewski made the sculpture. Zbigniew Preisner and Władysław Bartoszewski funded it, and it was unveiled on the twenty-ninth of June two thousand.