European ArtEast Foundation, recently founded by the Polish collectors Irmina Nazar and Artur Trawinski, will officially launch in London in October 2017. The Foundation is dedicated to supporting visual art from Eastern Europe through international projects - including exhibitions, research and publications - in collaboration with art institutions and organisations.

Aiming to provide a global perspective on Eastern European art and culture, the Foundation encourages the development of projects that expand the discourse around contemporary art from this region. Irmina Nazar and Artur Trawinski were both born in Poland, a country that has gone through dramatic changes over the decades like many of its neighbours. Under communism, Polish artists became isolated from the international art-world through a lack of access to exhibitions, art criticism, education and the market. Despite this, many post-war artists still boldly developed their own vision independently from the standardized canon of Socialist Realism. The Foundation therefore has a particular interest in encouraging the rediscovery of seminal Eastern European artists from the 1950's and 1960's and maintaining their legacy. It also embodies the values of patronage as a context and framework to encourage creativity, innovation and cultural production among contemporary artists.

The Foundation’s first project was Effigies of Life, A Tribute to Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930 – 2017). Featuring over 120 works across multiple museums, venues and outdoor public locations in Wroclaw, Poland, in summer 2017, the retrospective exhibition was curated by Maria Rus Bojan and Mariusz Hermansdorfer, the former director of Wroclaw’s National Museum. Following on from the exhibition, through the publication programme of the Foundation, two editorial projects dedicated to Magdalena Abakanowicz are supported: the catalogue of the exhibition in Wroclaw alongside with the artist’s catalogue raisoneé, the lifetime research of Mariusz Hermansdorfer and Polish art historian Jola Gola.

FOUNDERS, IRMINA NAZAR AND ARTUR TRAWINSKI 
Irmina Nazar and Artur Trawinski are the founders of the European ArtEast Foundation. Both Polish, they have supported arts for over a decade as collectors and philanthropists. Irmina and Artur oversee all activities of the foundation. They live between Poland and France with their children.

Irmina is the Founder of the Fangor Foundation, an organisation she created to preserve the legacy of 20th century Polish artist Wojciech Fangor (1922 – 2015) through archiving, documentation and developing curatorial interest. Through her work with Wojciech Fangor, she was inspired to further research his contemporaries in Poland and Eastern Europe.

As a collector, Artur has supported both emerging and established artists. He has a particular interest in abstract expressionism from the 1960's and its correspondents in Poland. Artur is the Founder of global cosmetics and perfume company FM World, a leader in multi-level marketing. First established in Wrocław in 2004, the company quickly expanded globally and now operates across 93 countries. Today under Artur’s leadership, the company works with over a million international business partners.

DIRECTOR, JONATHAN TYBEL
Jonathan runs the Foundation’s programme alongside working on operations. Half-Polish, half-German, he grew up in Iceland and is now based between London and LA. He is the co-founder of production company Meyers Media Group and has worked extensively across film, broadcast and media.  He graduated from the University of Arts London with studies at Central Saint Martins and London College of Communication.

CURATORIAL ADVISOR, MARIA RUS BOJAN
Born in Romania and now based in Amsterdam, Maria is an independent curator and advisor with a special interest in the Eastern European neo-avant-garde. In 2017, she co-curatedEffigies of Life, A Tribute to Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930 – 2017) in Wroclaw. She was previously the director of the Sindan Cultural Centre Cluj (1999 – 2003) and a curator at the Art Museum of Cluj (1994 – 1999). She has played a significant role in exhibiting Romanian artists globally, and co-curatedPerforming History, the Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011). Working closely with German performance artist Ulay, she has curated and produced several exhibitions about his work and published Ulay’s first monograph Whispers: Ulay on Ulay, with Valiz Foundation Amsterdam, which received the AICA Award for publications in 2015. Currently, she runs MB Art Agency, a platform for curatorial and art advisory projects. Since 2001 she has been a member of the International Association of Art Critics and in 2013, she became a member of Tate’s Russia and Eastern Europe Acquisition Committee (REEAC). In 2017 she was appointed as a trustee of Beelden aan Zee Museum in The Hague, overseeing Eastern European projects.

For further information, please see www.europeanarteast.com
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