An iconic neon sign, symbolizing Poland’s communist-era attempt to reconcile consumer aspirations with socialism, has been given protected status.
The neon sign was first unveiled in 1961, when it debuted on top of one of the Socialist Realist buildings framing the capital’s Plac Konstytucji (Constitution Square), and quickly became nicknamed the Siatkarka (the volleyball player).
Originally installed to advertise a sports store on the ground floor, the sign depicted a female volleyball player and an animated ball falling 40 meters down onto the pedestrians below.
It was erected at a time when Poland was undergoing a campaign of ‘neonization,’ a state-funded project that had the long-term aim of marrying the nation’s consumerist aspirations with socialist principles.
To meet this end, some of the best graphic artists of the era were recruited, among them Jan Mucharski, and it was he who designed the Siatkarka.
However, the collapse of communism ushered in dark times for Polish neon. Viewed as an outdated reminder of the socialist past, many signs were scrapped while others were left to simply rot.
Once celebrated as ‘the Queen of Warsaw neons,’ the Siatkarka belonged to this latter category.
There it could have remained were it not for the efforts of artist Paulina Ołowska, who funded its first restoration in 2006 through the sale of her own artwork.
“I liked that it featured a strong, dynamic woman,” said Ołowska, “and I wanted to show that neon signs from that time could be seen as equals with contemporary works of art.”
She added she also “wanted to pay off a kind of debt, because for years I had been drawing from the aesthetics of the 60s and 70s, as my works often refer to utopian ideas of Socialist Realism and modernism.”
Twelve years later, the sign was renovated once more, with the work funded by Warsaw’s Galeria Foksal. It returned to the news in 2020 at the height of Poland’s women's rights protests when it was temporarily embellished by a neon lightning bolt—the adopted symbol of the demonstrations.
Now, its future has been further safeguarded with the decision to induct it into Warsaw’s register of monuments.
“It’s an example of a project with high artistic class,” said the capital’s conservator.
“The historical value of the object lies in that it is material evidence of the neonization process that was carried out during the times of the Polish People’s Republic,” he continued. “The preserved sign is a relic of the urban structure of Plac Konstytucji, a representative area of the city.”
The sign’s artistic merit was also praised. “The artistic value of the installation results from its balanced composition, its synthetically captured form, and the lightness of its composition, despite its monumental character,” wrote the conservator.
