Exhibition: The power of passion. Alfons Długosz 1902-1975

A part of the exhibition is devoted to the establishing of the museum in Wieliczka, since it was the work to which Alfons Długosz devoted the last two decades of his life, leaving aside both his personal life and artistic activity.
Długosz, impressed by its space and history, recognised the value of material heritage presented by the Wieliczka mine. In the 1950s, he undertook actions which led to saving salt chambers, historic machinery and mining tools. As he mentioned himself: The scope of the undertaking I had set for myself was daunting. With our combined effort, we reached into the underground labyrinth of cave-ins, chasms, and ancient faults, to reclaim old, forgotten, or discarded tools, and ages-old machines whose purpose more often than not was a mystery.

Ultimately, it was the great passion and devotion of Alfons Długosz that bore fruit in the form of the Museum in Wieliczka and, in the long term, caused that the Wieliczka Salt Mine was added to the first UNESCO World Heritage List in 1978.

The exhibition is the first, after over 40 years, to include a wide cross-section of the Artist’s works. Therefore, the public may again admire the fruits of his extraordinary industriousness and creative passion expressed in many fields of his artistic activity. The presented objects, created in very diverse techniques (oil, water colour, pastel, wood, ceramics), as well as photographs, documents and souvenirs, prove his infallible creative powers, with the crowning achievement of founding the underground museum – the magnum opus of the artist.