Galicia Museum Exhibition, Krakow | Romek Marber

The retrospective exhibition, Romek Marber: Graphics, was held at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, Poland. It ran from 18 November 2015 until 17 April 2016. Curated and organised by the museum’s Deputy Director Tomaz Strug, this was the first opportunity for a Polish audience to see the breadth of his work. The idea that Romek’s work could be exhibited in Poland was through the suggestion and dedication of Ewa Satalecka, Polish graphic designer and educator.

Marber wrote in his 2010 book, No Return: Journeys in the Holocaust, that “however much I long to see Poland, I couldn’t go back”. However, when the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow held the first retrospective exhibition of his work, he found the resolve to attend the private view in person with his partner of many years, the graphic designer Orna Frommer-Dawson who also designed the exhibition.

The original concept for the exhibition was by David Jury, designer, author and course leader of MA Art at the Colchester Institute, and initially organised by Kaavous Clayton, the curator of the The Minories, in Colchester. It was then arranged to be shown at Brighton University from 3 March until 9 April 2014 by Professor Bruce Brown and Professor Anne Boddington.

The Galicia Jewish Museum exhibition was created in cooperation with the Faculty of Arts of the Brighton University and was made possible thanks to the sponsorship of The David Berg Foundation.

The exhibition was Romek’s first return to Poland for nearly 70 years and he made an emotional visit to Bochnia.

Sandra Witte (organiser of Yad Vashem ceremony in Berlin), Romek Marber, Bruce Brown and Orna Frommer-Dawson in Bochnia.

nowy czas, February 2016. Article by Joanna Ciechanowska about Romek’s return to Poland for his retrospective exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum.

Krakowie article about the Marber exhibition at Galicia Jewish Museum, Krakow, November 2015.

Gazeta Wyborcza: Ale Historia. Article about Romek Marber in Polish Newspaper ‘Electoral Gazette’. 25 February 2019.

Galicia Museum Exhibition, KrakowEditor2021-06-11T14:01:11+01:00

Galicia Museum Exhibition, Krakow, Poland

In November 2015 the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow opened the first Polish exhibition of Romek Marber’s works. The show was a retrospective and included all of his most important graphics.

I first heard of Romek Marber only a year earlier. Ewa Satalecka, a Polish graphic designer and design professor showed me a catalogue of his recent Brighton exhibition. I recognized some of the Penguin covers, only I didn’t know they were created by Marber and I had no idea who he was. It was beyond belief that he was known to only a handful of Poles, and most of them were professionals from the field of graphic design. And there was Marber’s biography: Polish Jew, a survivor of KL Plaszow and Auschwitz, who after being liberated in Germany settled in England, and never returned here.

In the Museum we instantly knew we should make an exhibition and introduce Marber’s works to a wide Polish public. And we did so – in cooperation with the Faculty of Arts of the Brighton University, and with help from Bruce Brown and Orna Frommer-Dawson.

And something amazing had happened. Romek Marber came to the exhibition opening. It was his first visit to Poland since 1945. His modesty, kindness (and beautiful old-style Polish) touched the hearts of everyone at the Museum.

Tomasz Strug
Deputy Director / Chief Curator
Galicia Jewish Museum

Krakow, night and day 2015. Photographs © Orna Frommer-Dawson

Romek and a close group of family and friends would spend each evening sitting in Krakow bars and restaurants drinking vodka and reminiscing. He is pictured here with Bruce Brown who helped to arrange the Brighton University exhibition and its transfer to Krakow.