Translating Marek

Marek Zulawski: artist, journalist, my father

London

Marek Zulawski Mural Unearthed at London Transport Museum

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In early March, I emailed the London Transport Museum (LTM) out of curiosity. I’d heard a rumour that some old mural by my father Marek Zulawski was in their depot. Was it really there?

I’d never seen it, neither had my mother. We only had a remnant of Marek’s development of it, a mock-up that hung on the wall before he began working on the real thing.

A couple days later, I got a reply from LTM’s Senior Curator Laura Sleath that it was true. They would be happy to invite me to come see it.

But before we get to what happened in 2023, we need to go back over 70 years ago to understand the context and significance of this piece.… Keep reading

Always look on the bright side of death, 1977

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Today marks the 30th anniversary of Marek Zulawski’s death, an appropriate day to share this passage he wrote about a friend’s funeral. Marek was a man who kept himself in prime health until his unexpected parting in 1985 – it seems his heart couldn’t keep up with the rest of him. The translated excerpt below is at once a meditation on age, death, virility and, of course, Marek’s own vanity.

(The banner image is a CC photo of Brompton Cemetery, taken by Scott Wylie)

Brompton Cemetery. Stefan Osiecki’s funeral.

From a distance, I could already see a group of people eagerly surrounding a fresh hole, on the bottom of which rests a coffin.… Keep reading

“40 years wiser, 40 years stupider”: Marek on getting old, 1980

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 Today’s excerpt follows on from last week’s in which Marek nearly died on the Baltic Sea. Recalling that episode leads him to mull over just how much life he really does have left after all these years.

The second volume of Study for a Self-Portrait is dedicated to my mother, but it’s only in the more intimate sections where he addresses her as directly as this. They had gotten married earlier that year and were together until death did them part in 1985.

Back then, I was how old?

20.

In other words, half a century ago. More even.

Today, fear has come back to me again and I don’t know how to deal with it.… Keep reading

Romance at the outbreak of World War II: meeting Halina Korn

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Halina Korn (born Halina Korngold) was Marek’s second wife, and a respected painter and writer in her own right. They were married for decades until her death on 2 October 1978 – precisely 36 years ago today. Other parts of Study for a Self-Portrait delve into the darker parts of their relationship, particularly Halina’s depression, but I thought I’d introduce her with this lively country-hopping section that includes how she and Marek first met. I particularly like the part about their life in London during the Battle of Britain. – AZ

It was autumn 1938. Yes, a year before the war.… Keep reading

How Marek ended up living in London in 1936

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Life is chaos. It’s a cacophony upon which we try to impose a sense of order, often for the sake of our own sanity.

When I read the excerpt below, I was unsurprised to find my father had ended up a Londoner by accident, not design. It was through another series of accidents that he met my mother, that I was born in London and that now I’m writing these very words.

Some people struggle to accept that we primates stumble through existence. They insist that everything is controlled and planned out. One of the gloomier versions of this type of worldview is that everything is manipulated by some shadowy ill-meaning cabal, often labelled as the Illuminati or New World Order.

… Keep reading

Malevich and the birth of Minimalism, 1975

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I visited the impressive Malevich retrospective at the Tate Modern recently, and thought I’d see if Marek had a few words on the man. I found this dense extract which talks about Malevich’s role in the minimalism of modern art. The gallery visit he describes near the end left me with the distinct impression he’d be shaking his head at a lot of today’s art were he still alive… – AZ

There is no doubt that, independent from art as a deliberate activity of man, there exist artistic phenomena which move us with their monumental simplicity. The desert, oceans, ploughed fields, steppes, the heavens and earth.… Keep reading