The range of themes and painterly approaches in Wilhelm Sasnal’s oeuvre is remarkably wide. The four paintings acquired for the Kunstsammlung clearly demonstrate the apparent divergence and immediately appealing power of his work. An ostensibly abstract painting such as An Eyelid is, in reality, a radical inner view, attempting to capture the vibrant visions of color behind closed eyes directed at a source of light. In stylistic contrast to this is Untitled (Hiena), a photo-realistically precise modernist interior depicting the body of a dead cat: the attempt to lend a visible form to a family tragedy. A similar contrast unfolds between In the Hood and Kielce. One depicts the view from a closed hood and thus oscillates between the encapsulation of the world of an ego and its encounter with the space outside. The other refers to Sasnal’s recurring preoccupation with what might be called the continuation of the past. It depicts the now demolished ski jump in the city of Kielce, which, with a Jewish ghetto, was part of the National Socialist extermination system during World War II, but also a center of Polish resistance and, in 1946, the site of a pogrom against Holocaust survivors. Sasnal does not approach this abundance of incriminating history directly, but rather through the detour of a landscape that is as melancholic as it is lapidary. The paintings were acquired by the Friends in 2010 from an exhibition of works by the artist in K21.