Polish-Chinese Art Relations in the 19th and 20th Century

Abstract

Polish-Chinese artistic relations in the 19th and 20th century have only recently become a subject of research. One of the events that significantly contributed to this was the I Conference of Polish and Chinese Art Historians “Poland-China. Art and Cultural Heritage” held in Cracow in 2009, as well as volumes of studies published in English (Cracow 2011) and Chinese (“古今波兰艺术和中波美术交流”, Shanghai 2012). Polish-Chinese relations are, however, much older. The Chinese were supposed to have served in the Mongolian armies that invaded Poland three times in the thirteenth century. In the middle of the 13th century a monk from the Franciscan monastery in Wroclaw, Benedykt Polak (Benedict the Pole) together with papal legate Giovanni del Carpine travelled to Karakorum – the capital of the Mongolian khans. After returning to Cracow he prepared an account of the journey, one of the most important in the Middle Ages. The origins of interest in the art and culture of China date back to the 17th century.