Famous Poles – Art & culture
A very small overview of a very large area. If you want to know more, I recommend “The History Of Polish Literature” by Czesław Miłosz, which is available at international bookshops.
Click on the name or the picture to read more!
Olga Tokarczuk
Delivers a fine critique of Polish self-perception and historical consciousness in a series of contemporary descriptions and historical novels.
Wisława Szymborska
Poet and literary critic
Czesław Miłosz
Diplomat, writer, sharp literary critic
Władysław Reymont
Detailed landscape descriptions and a description of industrialisation from the late 1900s.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Brilliant, gripping novels about Polish greatness and a deep ethnocentric European sense of superiority.
Bolesław Prus
Brilliant descriptions of Warsaw in the 1870s and the social changes of the period.
Andrzej Wajda
Film director. Takes a close look at Polish society with rare insight and extreme film production.
Roman Polanski
Eminent film director with a childhood in the Jewish ghetto and a rape allegation in the US.
Jan Matejko
Has painted all the great moments in Poland’s history. Perhaps he actually created the history of Poland.
Canaletto
Court painter from 1770. Called Warsaw’s photographic apparatus.
Please send an email to m@hardenfelt.pl if you would like an English-speaking tour guide to show you the most important places in Warsaw.