Exhibition: The shape of propaganda

For many Poles, the name "Nowa Huta" is associated with socialist realism - the style of art and architecture adopted from the USSR - and seen as a symbol of communist propaganda. Now an exhibition at the Historical Museum in Kraków goes inside Nowa Huta, proving that, despite its unfortunate connotations, the era's interior design still holds a great deal of interest.

Nowa Huta is an industrial district on the outskirts of Kraków that was built in the 1950s by a group of architects and designers who managed to create a socialist-realist aesthetic based on the Renaissance national style.

"Nowa Huta was fortunate to have been planned by a pair of talented pre-war designers - Marian Sigmund and Władysław Wincze - from the Ład group who 'smuggled' pre-war elements into their plans to make them more graceful," the exhibition's curator, Leszek Sibila explains. In the case of Nowa Huta, the weight of heavy columns gives monumentality to the aerodynamic shapes and geometrical forms of folk art - a feature particularly characteristic of the interiors of some of the district's public buildings. However, since renovations began in the 1990s, these features have started to disappear.

The exhibition is made up of some of what was salvaged - including a collection of original photos taken in the 1950s, as well as documents, plans, books used by designers, decorative elements, original furniture and everyday objects - in addition to some examples of Nowa Huta's official and residential interiors.