Plac Polski carries a simple name, but it opens onto a city whose postwar artistic life was rebuilt with remarkable speed. Wrocław’s public Academy of Arts and Design began in 1946, first operating as the College of Fine Arts. In January that year, Eugeniusz Geppert was assigned the job of creating a higher art school in a city badly damaged by the war.
The new school occupied two earlier educational buildings: the former Municipal School of Crafts and Art Crafts and the former State Academy of Arts and Crafts. Its first staff brought together painters, a graphic artist and designer, specialists in glass, furniture and interiors, and ceramic artists. That breadth still defines the academy: its teaching spans painting, sculpture, graphic arts, media, ceramics, glass, interior architecture, design and stage design.
An especially unexpected chapter came in 1957, when the Theatre of the Senses combined experimental theatre with performance action. Since 2008, the institution has borne Geppert’s name. Let the everyday movement of the square be a quiet reminder that art schools are not only places for finished masterpieces, but places where new forms are tried out.
