Commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the project was developed and executed by the Gdynia studio Traffic Design.
“The ministry basically wanted us to show that they’re still actively looking for the artifacts that vanished during the war,” said Renata Maj of Traffic Design. Handed thirteen spots to work with – twelve in Gdynia and one in Gdańsk – Traffic Design then replicated a series of long-lost paintings.
“The most significant challenge was working out how best to present something that doesn’t exist,” said Maj. Working as the lead graphic designer, Maj and her team opted for a non-standard approach by reproducing the paintings but giving them a contemporary context.
“Because these are works that can no longer be viewed, we decided to set them against the kind of messages you see when a person –or even a pet – goes missing,” said Maj.
As such, Hans Holbein the Younger’s Portrait of Johann Schwarzwaldt is embossed with the words “Wróć do domu” (Eng: Return Home) whilst Friedrich Eduard Meyherheim’s The Little Housewise is marked “Zaginiony” (Eng: Lost) and mimics the missing-person appeals traditionally found on American milk cartons.
Others, meanwhile, take their cue from digital media. Daniel Schultz’s Dog and Bird Fight comes obscured by the ‘crossed eye’ icon associated with blocked or sensitive content. In the case of Jacob van Loo’s Portrait of an Old Woman, the mural is stamped with the words “Plik nie jest dostępny” (Eng: File Not Found).
Taking two months to complete, the project was not without artistic obstacles. “There is a margin of error,” said Maj. “When you look at a 19th-century oil painting, the detail will of course be different when it’s enlarged and painted using water-based paints.”
All of the paintings represented once belonged to Pomeranian collections, however this is not the only nod made to the local region.
“Gdynia is famous for having a lot of urban wildlife, and that includes wild boars that can often be spotted literally roaming the streets,” said Maj. Fittingly, one of the murals depicts The Boar by Wenceslaus Hollar.
“This was a last-minute change and an acknowledgment of the local area,” said Maj.
More than just injecting life into previously mundane corners of the Tri-City, the murals have won praise for drawing attention to Poland’s lost antiquities.
“Actions like this bring these lost works to a wider audience and disseminate knowledge about them,” said Marta Cienkowska, the Deputy Minister of Culture. “This helps in our search for them.”
It is estimated that Poland lost around half a million artifacts as a result of WWII, with their total value coming to several billion dollars. As things stand, around 700 have been recovered over the years.
