Save the date: Forms of Light
Michał Diament
exhibition
Forms of Light
Michał Diament
16.09 – 15.11.2026
Curator: Cezary Lisowski
Opening: 16.09.2026, 19:00
Free admission
The starting point was a previously unpublished archive comprising over a thousand negatives, prints, and documentary and experimental photographs, as well as several dozen surviving glass objects. The materials obtained from the artist’s family were, for the first time, subjected to review, research, and digitisation. This made it possible to reconstruct Diament’s creative path and to see how photography and glass consistently intertwined in his work.
Initially, Diament designed simple, functional tableware intended for mass production, in keeping with the ideals of modern design of the 1960s – much like many other representatives of the Wrocław school of glass. However, visits to the glass factory and his contact with the living, malleable mass of glass gradually changed his way of thinking. Glass ceased to be merely a utilitarian material. It became a sculptural medium. In the final years of his life, the artist created organic, unique objects now referred to as ‘Ghosts’, which rank among the most interesting examples of original artistic glasswork from that period.
His photography followed a similar path. From documenting the artistic life of Wrocław and taking photographs of glass for the university and other designers, Diament moved on to experiments in which the camera became a tool for transforming reality. He was interested not so much in the objects themselves as in optical phenomena – reflections, the refraction of light, transparency and the rhythm of forms.
This exhibition presents Michał Diament’s body of work in such a wide-ranging manner for the first time: from documentary photography, through optical experiments and photographs of glass, to preserved functional and artistic objects. In doing so, it brings to light from the archives the figure of an artist whose work adds an important, yet insufficiently recognised, photographic chapter to the history of the Wrocław school of glass.
The exhibition is created in partnership with the successors of Michał Diament’s work and Lisowski Gallery.
Michał Diament (1935–1977) was a photographer, designer of functional glassware and creator of artistic glass, associated with the Wrocław art scene. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław in the studio of Professor Stanisław Dawski. He designed glass for mass production, created unique artistic forms, and worked in documentary, advertising and experimental photography. In his work, he consistently explored the relationships between light, matter and image.
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