Grabowski Gallery

Mateusz Bronislaw Grabowski (1904-1976) was by profession a practising pharmacist. Born in Vilnius, Lithuania he fled the invading German army and came to Britain in 1940 as a member of the Polish Army. After the end of World War II, he used his professional training and set up as a chemist and as a mail-order company sending medicines to Poland. In 1959 he established the Grabowski Gallery next door to his pharmacy in South Kensington, close to the artistic milieu of the capital. Allegedly the gallery was set up not to make a profit from the artists but as yet I have no proof of this. Grabowski set out to promote the young artists of the day of any nationality whose work he felt had something to offer. He was an early champion of Pop Art exhibiting many of the forerunners of this work. The gallery closed in 1975 and a year later its founder died of cancer. Before his death, Mateusz Grabowski gave many works to the Museum of Art in Łódź, (pronounced 'woodge'), Poland.