Polish Combatants’ Hall
Tapestry Collection
A series of seven works giving visual form to Poland’s national and historical consciousness
Eugene (Eugeniusz) Chruścicki
Warsaw 1914 — Toronto 1984
Painter, muralist, sculptor, and veteran of the Second World War. Born in Warsaw on 15 August 1914, Chruścicki trained at the city’s School of Fine Arts from 1930, receiving his diploma in 1937, the same year his painting King Poniatowski’s Hunting received an honourable mention at an international exhibition in Berlin. He served in the September Campaign of 1939, survived the German occupation of Warsaw, and following the Uprising of 1944 was deported and imprisoned at Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. He emigrated to Canada in 1948.
Settling in Toronto, he co-founded the artistic confraternity “Smocza Jama” and worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a scenic artist from 1959 to 1979. He undertook sacred commissions for Polish National Catholic communities across Canada and the United States, most notably the monumental linden-wood triptych altar at St. John’s Polish National Catholic Cathedral in Toronto, completed in 1955.
Between 1974 and 1976 he created this series of paintings for the Polish Combatants’ Hall — large-scale oil-on-textile works painted in a style evoking medieval tapestry, organized around the cities, landscapes, and history of Poland. They remain a testament to his lifelong commitment to preserving Polish heritage for future generations in the diaspora.
The Works
Gdynia
Gdynia — a port city on the Baltic Coast — is rendered in a modern, abstract style that incorporates text to help tell its story, in contrast to the other tapestries in the series. With less attention to perspective and more to shape and colour, Chruścicki approaches the city with serenity, elevating the nautical elements that define it.
Beneath the coat of arms, a phrase identifies Gdynia as the origin of the Kashubian people, of West Slavic descent. Ontario is home to a settlement of the same name — Kaszuby — which was the first Polish settlement in the province.
Kraków
At the centre of this expansive tapestry is the celebrated architectural landscape of the city of Kraków, including Wawel Castle, the Wisła (Vistula) River, and St. Mary’s Church in the city square.
Flanking either side are historical Polish figures important to the development of Kraków, including mathematician and astronomer Copernicus, depicted on the right.
Lwów
The most military of the works in the Polish Combatants’ Hall, this tapestry commemorates the pilots of the Pan Tadeusz Kościuszko Fighter Squadron during the Polish-Soviet War.
At its centre, Chruścicki depicts The American Flyer’s Memorial (1925, by Józef Starzyński), located at the Łyczakowski Cemetery in Lviv (present-day Ukraine). Lviv’s architectural landscape surrounds it in the background, visually weaving the pilots into the city’s history forever.
Poznań
This tapestry features the western Polish city of Poznań, capital of Wielkopolska, one of the country’s main regions. The primary focus is a grouping of buildings integral to the urban and religious identity of the city, including Poznań Town Hall and Poznań Cathedral.
At the far left stands Mieszko I, one of the first rulers of Poland, buried within the Cathedral. Much as Chruścicki illustrates here, the architecture of Poznań ranges in style from the Baroque to Neo-Classicism.
Warsaw
Warsaw is depicted here as a mixture of old and new — historical architecture placed in the foreground, contemporary skyscrapers suggested in the background.
The current-day capital of Poland has seen the most rapid transformation of any metropolitan city in the country, while simultaneously serving as its primary national symbol, as reflected in the allegories of Poland and Warsaw in the upper half of the canvas.
Wilno
Wilno — or Vilnius, today the capital of Lithuania — played a central role in Poland’s history during the era of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795). The city’s historic buildings occupy the centre of the composition, flanked by historical figures who shaped Polish geography and identity: Stefan Batory, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, and Józef Piłsudski, the 20th-century Polish Chief of State, whose ambitions to keep the two nations linked drew comparisons to Batory’s own.
In the upper left, Chruścicki pays visual homage to the Three Crosses, a prominent monument in Lithuania. A similar monument stands in the Wilno and Kaszuby Polish settlement in Ontario.
Wawel
Dedicated to Wawel — the most famous castle in Poland and the historical seat of Polish kings and queens — this tapestry combines the fortress’s architecture with the legend of the Wawel Dragon. The creature terrorized the city during the reign of King Krakus until a cobbler’s apprentice named Skuba defeated it, earning the king’s daughter’s hand in marriage and the title of founder of Kraków.
Running down either side of the composition are the emblems of Poland’s wartime military units: the Kotwica (anchor symbol of the Polish Home Army), the Warsaw Mermaid (emblem of the II Polish Corps), and the helmet and hussar’s wing of the First Polish Armoured Division.