Original handwritten poster manifesto: "The Art Without Any Sense /Nonsense. by Kwietniewski, Andrzej

Łódź: 1981. Original poster, with hand-written text in green marker on a single repurposed red leaf measuring 90 × 67 cm. Two small perforations from push pins to bottom corners, adhesive marks to upper extremity. Vertical and horizontal creases from folding. Still about very good. A five-point manifesto, with text in English and Polish, dated 1.01.81 and signed by Andrzej Kwietniewski, one of the founders of Łódź Kaliska, a neo-dadaist art collective active from 1979 to this day. Charged with anarchic energy, the group positioned itself against official state-sanctioned communist art as well as self-seriousness of the neo-avantgarde unofficial art. The group's first manifesto, written by Marek Janiak and Andrzej Kwietniewski, appeared in 1980. The text typed in Polish and English, self-consciously parodies the manifesto as the signature genre of the avant-garde. Numerous mock-manifestos appeared throughout the 1980s, using logical errors to articulate gibberish ethical codes. Art historian Piotr Piotrowski writes: "The concept of anarchism was key for this particular formation since the artists involved were mainly interested in rejecting any form of authority: political (opposition), ideological (nationalism and religion), as well as cultural (institutions and grand art historic narratives). By relying on humor, pastiche, parody and coarse eroticism, their performances and short films were supposed to strip art of its pathos, knock it off its pedestal and tear it out of the frame provided by the historical discourse" (see Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe, pp.130-131). This absurdist text from New Year's day 1981 is unrecorded in the group's online museum. Hand-written in green marker on a section of a repurposed poster, it ambiguously celebrates and critiques the nonsensical in art or art as nonsense. In keeping with the group's principles, most of the members had no formal artistic training. Participants of the group included Marek Janiak, Andrzej Kwietniewski, Adam Rzepecki, Andrzej Świetlik, Andrzej Wielogórski, with Zofia Łuczko joining in 1983.