The answer can be found in another interview given several years earlier. “I had a beautiful childhood. Whereas I think of my life as a whole like a sphere, which is a sign of fullness (not only in the Mediterranean civilisation), I can see my family home as a beautiful cube with equal sides. There is everything there and everything is in place: mother, father and numerous siblings.”^[3]His father, Julian Szajna, was an engine driver, he shuttled regularly from Krakow to Lviv. His mother, Karolina, née Pieniążek, was a housewife. Józef Szajna had four siblings: two sisters and two brothers. He was born in Rzeszów on 13 March 1922. A Polish Jew, whom he met in Tel Aviv in 1986 while working on the seventh version of Replika (Rejoinder), once told him that 13 brought him good luck. She explained that, “In the Kabbalah, we sum two neighbouring figures: one plus three. And four is a lucky number: he is lucky.”^[4]You can look at Szajna’s war years in this way: he was twice put into a death cell and twice had a narrow escape.

He was arrested in 1941 during an abortive attempt to cross the Slovak-Hungarian border, landing in several prisons before finally being sent to Auschwitz. At the time he was 19. After the war, he spoke on numerous occasions about his near-death experience as prisoner 18729, giving many details. From the perspective of his art, one confession seems particularly important: at the moments of despair he made a pledge that if he survived he would devote his life to acting in the name of justice. He also said that he had decided to fulfil this promise through art.^[5] He treated his mission extremely seriously, as he dealt with subjects referring to fundamental issues such as humanity and the condition of the contemporary world. What helped him to survive, first in Auschwitz and then in Buchenwald, was certainly not only luck, but also his excellent physical shape. Before the war, he trained successfully in swimming: he was a Polish high-diving champion and came second in school swimming competitions. After the liberation he found himself in Maczków, where in the summer of 1946 he posed for pictures by the River Ems, showing off his fit body with pride.

For several years after the war, those Poles who had been forcibly removed to Germany stayed in Maczków, as they called the German town Haren in Lower Saxony. Szajna passed his matura exams there and allegedly wrote his Polish exam about the Warsaw uprising, although he obviously only had second-hand knowledge about it.^[6] After passing the exams, he had to choose between a scholarship in Paris or returning to Poland. “I feel like nobody needs me, I have plenty of hang-ups. I can see a future in studying. I am ashamed of my past hump and I don’t want to admit what I have gone through. I’m starting my studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in 1947,” wrote Szajna many years later.^[7] In 1952, he graduated from graphics, and a year later from scenography, where he was a student of Karol Frycz. For his diploma, he designed sets for The Birds by Aristophanes. He used to say that graphics is “directing a surface,” whereas scenography is “organising space.” For the rest of his life, he kept one foot in fine arts and the other in theatre. Two years after graduation he returned to the academy as a lecturer. He held classes with students in the fourth year, lecturing on general decoration and festivity decorations. He worked at the Academy in Krakow for more than a decade later using his experience from this period when managing the Set Design School in Warsaw. “When a student joins a teacher’s class of his own choice, what he expects is a conversation, a dialogue. He wants to learn something from the professor. However, it is the right thing for him or her to change direction later on, to direct towards himself. The important moment is when young people start to ask themselves a question: how shall I counter Szajna?”^[8] In fact, throughout his professional life, Szajna was in close touch with young artists, giving him an insight into new phenomena in art. As a result, the relationship was based on exchange. Szajna was also able to become enthusiastic about someone else’s idea and help young artists make their debut.

Szajna himself made his official debut as a set designer in the Ziemia Opolska Theatre, designing sets for Sprawa rodzinna (Family Business), directed by Ireneusz Erwan. However, it was not his first work. Actor Antoni Pszoniak remembered that they had met in amateur theatre. “It was when I was a student and performed in a workers’ theatre. I was cast in the role of Mazepa. Set design was done by a painter from Krakow, Mr Szajna. There was a castle, beautiful interiors and candlesticks. Szajna himself dressed me in a remarkably beautiful, gold costume. There was also a beautiful wig, which he worked on himself. Finally, he added fine lace, which he had cut out of net curtains.”^[9] Szajna himself referred to even earlier experiences. “I did set designs as an amateur soon after liberation in Maczków, from 1946 to 1947. It was also in Maczków that I saw a performance by Leon Schiller for the first time.”^[10] As far as the theatre in Opole is concerned, its managing director was Krystyna Skuszanka. Along with her husband, the theatre director Jerzy Krasowski, and with Szajna employed as a full-time set designer, she moved to Nowa Huta, the first socialist city, which was still being constructed at the time, where they continued their careers in the Ludowy Theatre. This is how she described their beginnings: “We started from scratch. There was no old theatre group, no old habits, no old audience… Most of the actors were very young and had just graduated from school. Our first audience consisted of the workers who had built the theatre.”^[11] 

Szajna’s work was soon appreciated by critics. For his set designs created in the Ludowy Theatre, mainly for performances directed by Jerzy Krasowski: Turandot (co-directed by Skuszanka), Of Mice and Men, Jacobsky and the Colonel, Szajna received the 1957 artistic award from “Przegląd Kulturalny”. Interestingly enough, it was an award in the area of fine arts, not the theatre. The magazine laid out their reasons as follows: “It is a paradox that the award in the area of fine arts has not been given to a painter or sculptor but a set designer, i.e. a theatre person. Why? The reason is that Szajna, an artist active both in theatre and in fine arts, has managed to impose the aspect of fine arts on theatre to such a degree that the theatre in Nowa Huta owes its leading (or at least one of the most outstanding) position in our domestic theatre life also to this very factor.”^[12] It is worth mentioning that Szajna faced competition from strong candidates, including Alina Szapocznikow and Tadeusz Brzozowski. What did Szajna’s novelty consist in? Bożena Kowalska, who looks at his art not as a theatre specialist, but as an art critic, pointed to the fact that Szajna was a precursor. “In the late 1950s, a new phenomenon appeared in fine arts: environmental art. The authors of all the textbooks that we know of, i.e. American ones, claim that the first work of environmental art was created by Allan Kaprow in 1959. It was the set design for the famous happening entitled 18 Happenings in 6 Parts. Nevertheless, what Szajna did in Imiona władzy (The Names of Power) by Broszkiewicz, and in Of Mice and Men in 1956-1957, was genuine environmental art. He subordinated his art to the theatre, just as Kaprow subordinated his set design to a happening in 1959, i.e. three years later. It is one of the discoveries of Polish art that is not widely known.^[13] Certainly Jan Alfred Szczepański, a theatre critic, who reviewed the opening night of Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, directed by Skuszanka, did not realise that fact, as he contemptuously labelled Szajna’s set design as “made of rags.”^[14] 

Appreciated and controversial at the same time, Szajna was offered jobs in other theatres. In 1959, he designed sets for Nie-Boska komedia (The Un-divine Comedy) by Krasiński, directed by Bogdan Korzeniewski in the Nowy Theatre in Lodz, as well as for Wariat i zakonnica (The Madman and the Nun) and W małym dworku (The Little Manor) directed by Wanda Laskowska in the Dramatyczny Theatre in Warsaw. Later, Szajna returned to Witkacy’s works. Around that time he met Jerzy Grotowski, who had been running the Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole since the late 1950s. The theatre’s magazine (“Materiały – Dyskusje Teatru 13 Rzędów”) published Szajna’s article O teatrze współczesnym (About Contemporary Theatre), in which he wrote: “We make a mistake when we take set designs for a separate external value, if we think we can separate set design from what is happening on the stage. What I stand for is the theatre of unity.” ^[15] Szajna developed this idea in subsequent texts published in the press, explaining his vision of theatre. One of the questions journalists asked him most often was who he actually was – a theatre director or a painter? He always gave the same answer: the new theatre that he wanted to create was a result of various areas of art. His collaboration with Grotowski on Acropolis by Stanisław Wyspiański, carried out in 1962, was a turning point on Szajna’s path to autonomy in theatre. By setting the action in a concentration camp instead of on Wawel Hill, Szajna referred directly and straightforwardly to his war experience for the first time. The elements that he introduced on the stage, such as pipes, wheelbarrows and old, worn-out shoes, became a kind of trademark of his performances. However, the golden period of the Ludowy Theatre, supported by Lucjan Motyka, the First Secretary of the Voivodeship Committee of Polish United Workers’ Party (KW PZPR) in Krakow gradually faded. An avant-garde theatre turned out to be too hermetic in a worker’s city, and there were not enough discriminating viewers from Krakow to fill the house. In 1963, discouraged by criticism, Skuszanka and Krasowski left Nowa Huta for Warsaw. It was Szajna who took over the theatre as managing director. “The moment they left, I realised […] I was to play the role of an ancillary set designer, i.e. to work under a director. There would be no room for my artistic statement unless I took responsibility for both areas.” ^[16] The set designer who had recently become a theatre director – Szajna had just staged Post u ludożerców (Cannibals’ fast) by Joanna Gorczycka in the Adam Mickiewicz Theatre in Częstochowa – had now become the managing director of the theatre. 

Szajna’s first auteur premiere in the Ludowy Theatre – The Government Inspector by Gogol – was severely criticised in reviews. Roman Szydłowski wrote in “Trybuna Ludu” that “the director was showing off like a painter who was not able to translate his visions into a commonly comprehensible language of the stage.”^[17]He also criticised Szajna as the managing director, saying “The way [Szajna] started off staging The Government Inspector leads into a cul-de-sac of abstraction. As there is no way out, it is necessary to return as soon as possible.” Szajna managed to withstand such criticism and held the position for three years. However, that severe attack on The Government Inspector was not seen as a dismal failure by everyone. Grotowski congratulated Szajna, saying “I haven’t obtained such a bad review yet.”^[18] As far as the appraisal of the performances was concerned, both critics and reviewers were divided. However, even these polar extreme opinions – everything or nothing – proved that it was difficult to remain indifferent to Szajna’s theatre. The audiences of Puste pole (The Empty Field) by Tadeusz Hołuj said they were deeply shaken, an emotion that was repeated a few years later after the opening night of Replika (Rejoinder). Hołuj’s drama, whose action is set in Auschwitz-Birkenau, was staged for the 20th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. Like Szajna, Hołuj survived his time in a concentration camp. Until 1967, he was the secretary general of the International Auschwitz Committee, which Szajna also belonged to. The 1965 staging of The Empty Field was immediately invited to a theatre festival held in Florence – Prima Rassegna Internazionale dei Teatri Stabili – which marked the beginning of Szajna’s international career. 

For the 10th anniversary of the Ludowy Theatre and the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, he staged Mystery-Bouffe by Mayakovsky, which was criticised as a hermetic set of Szajna’s spectacular tricks. Soon afterwards, the artist left the theatre – his farewell performance was an adaptation of The Castle by Kafka, a performance about “a society that adopted and approved of the regime imposed by the castle and the tragedy of an individual who found themselves outside of the community.” He reminisced with grief: “I had to leave Nowa Huta, or actually I was turned out. The reason was both the repertoire and the form. I was charged with formalism or even revisionism – under Gomułka the meanings of these terms were close to each other.”^[19]

After leaving Nowa Huta, Szajna was employed as a full-time set designer in the Stary Theatre in Krakow. At that time, the managing director was Zygmunt Hübner, with Jerzy Jarocki as the full-time theatre director and Konrad Swinarski collaborating with the theatre on a regular basis. In comparison with Jarocki’s and Swinarski’s performances, Szajna’s theatre was aggressive and dominated by fine arts, with a casual approach to the text, which sometimes intrigued but more often faced resistance. In the Stary Theatre, Szajna staged Witkacy and Mayakovsky. Before the opening night of Paternoster by Helmut Kajzar the censorship banned rehearsals. The target was Hübner, not Szajna – he was under pressure to resign – but Szajna was tired with unfavourable Krakow. Moreover, new opportunities abounded: he directed in many theatres in Poland and for the first time he was offered a job abroad: in 1970 he designed sets for Macbeth directed by Colin George in Sheffield. Although 1969 was not good for Szajna in the Krakow theatre, it transpired that it was crucial in another area. For the 150th anniversary of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Szajna created Reminiscencje (Reminiscences): an installation commemorating Krakow artists who were killed during the war. He used the famous picture of sculptor Ludwik Puget wearing a striped prisoner’s uniform. Along with a sculpture by Władysław Hasior, the work represented Poland at the Biennale in Venice in 1970 and created a real stir. Gradually Reminiscences evolved towards Replika (Rejoinder), Szajna’s most important performance, which went down in history of the 20th century theatre. As a matter of fact, “Replika I was similar to Reminiscences, presented a year earlier. […] It was a spatial composition without any involvement of actors and it was first presented at the museum in Göteborg as part of the Days of Polish Culture in 1971. It was while I was there that it dawned on me that I could revive those characters I had cut out from life and from painting and later juxtaposed them […] I wanted to cross the border of pure art and, at the same time, to narrow the gap between theatre and art.”^[20] This is how the second version of Replica, in which there were actors, was created for the festival in Edinburgh in 1972, whereas a third version was prepared for a festival in Nancy a year later. The audience of the Studio Theatre in Warsaw saw only the fourth version. 

The news that Szajna was to succeed Irenesz Kanicki in the Klasyczny Theatre in the Palace of Culture and Science broke in the press after the opening night of Faust in the Polski Theatre in Warsaw. It was a legendary premiere, firstly because the safety curtain got stuck after the first act and the performance had to be interrupted, and secondly because of an extremely malicious review of the performance by Konstanty Puzyna. He finished as follows: “The touching dramatism of his Reminiscences was widely discussed, as well as fine arts changing into the theatre. This is why Szajna is absolutely convinced that it is enough to add Goethe, a curtain, a stage and some actors to change fine arts into real theatre. But it will not work, Józek, I swear by God, it won’t.”^[21] Szajna turned the title of Puzyna’s review – Gluglutiera – into the title of a play he wrote with Maria Czanerle and staged in the Studio Theatre two years later. In his auteur performance Gulgutiera, he tackled both critics and society. He finished the drama with the words: “Because I’m immortal, you wet sock.”^[22] Faust premiered in July 1971, and in October of the same year, August Grodzicki wrote in “Życie Warszawy”: “Szajna as a director is causing a furore in the theatrical life of the capital. Certainly he will repeatedly breed resentment, provoke public outcry or be laughed at. Maybe sometimes for good reason. But it doesn’t really matter – finally something will be going on, something you can argue about and fight over.” ^[23] Grodzicki was absolutely right. From the first premiere in the Studio Theatre, Szajna’s Theatre was an inflammatory point on the theatrical map of Warsaw, which both critics and audiences argued over. 

Witkacy, staged for the inauguration of the new stage, was the second performance (after Faust) in a series of performances portraying great individuals. Szajna used his successive characters: Dante, Cervantes and Mayakovsky, perceived by critics as the director’s alter ego, to raise questions concerning the sense of existence. “I was interested in the notion of time, not only space and fine arts – in what I call the biggest human issue: our time from the beginning until the end of life.”^[24] The premises of Szajna’s “organic theatre”, i.e. theatre that appeals directly to the viewer’s emotions (rather than to his intellect) through the use of image and sound, were most fully implemented in Dante¸ a performance loosely based on The Divine Comedy. The premiere was held in Florence in 1974 and was enthusiastically received by the Italians. As far as Poland was concerned, Dante eventually won over Szajna’s sceptics. This spectacular show, performed on a large stage, was paired in a double bill with the intimate Rejoinder presented in a painting workshop in the attic. In the 1970s, both these performances became (and later remained) a showcase for Polish theatre in the world. For one thing, they were visually attractive and could be understood without words. In addition, they were aligned with the cultural policy of the authorities. Although they sometimes referred to the subject of totalitarianism and individual involvement in social-political issues, they never directly related to current events or the authorities ruling the People’s Republic of Poland. On the contrary, they emphasised the timeless and universal aspect of moral dilemmas that man and artist face. Last but not least, Szajna was a member of the Polish United Workers’ Party. With over 500 shows, Dante set a record number of performances at the Studio Theatre that still stands today. 

At the Studio Theatre, Szajna carried out his great plan of establishing an art centre the like of which had never existed before. He perceived it as a centre integrating activities in the areas of theatre, fine arts, music and film. Since the very beginning, the theatre had been offering an art gallery with a rich programme of exhibitions and events accompanying them, and with a collection of a contemporary art that was being successively expanded. The theatre also housed workshops of the postgraduate School of Set Design that Szajna had been running at the request of the principal of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw since 1972. Within ten years, it had educated over 40 students from Poland and another 40 from other countries. Since 1980, the Studio Theatre had also been housing the headquarters of the Polish Association of Contemporary Music, reactivated by Zygmunt Krauze. The vision that Szajna had in mind when taking over the Klasyczny Theatre was formally completed in July 1980, when the theatre was renamed Centrum Sztuki Studio – Teatr Galeria (Studio Art Centre – Gallery Theatre). The decision to rename the institution unsettled the company of actors, who worried about the future of the theatre itself. Another factor that added to the tense atmosphere was the social-political situation: the Solidarity Carnival with its hope for change as well as the consequences of that, including the tragic finale with the introduction of martial law. In December 1981, Szajna submitted his resignation. Three months later, almost exactly on his sixtieth birthday, he took early retirement. Tired of the theatre, he wanted to return to painting.

Nevertheless, for the next few years he travelled around the world with Rejoinder and Dante – the theatre machine, whose wheels had once been set in motion, could not be stopped from one day to the next. Moreover, Szajna took great satisfaction in guest performances. In Yugoslavia and then in Germany, he carried out successive versions of Dante, whereas in Israel he staged the seventh version of Rejoinder. He returned to the Studio ten years after leaving it – Dante 1992 was a final farewell to the theatre he had created. The last performance that he staged in Poland was Déballage in the Wanda Siemaszkowa Theatre in Rzeszów, which the artist directed on the occasion of his 75th birthday anniversary. On the same occasion, the Szajna Gallery was opened in the theatre, presenting a permanent exhibition of the artist’s works. 

In 1989 at the São Paulo Art Biennial, Szajna was hailed one of the five most important artists of the 20th century. Several years earlier, his Reminiscences had been shown at an exhibition in West Berlin, alongside works by Paul Cézanne and Andy Warhol. Being a classic of the 20th century, Szajna entered the 21st century full of bad premonitions concerning the future of humankind. Art, which was his ladder to heaven and which was to change the world, had not in fact really changed anything. Józef Szajna died in Warsaw on 24 June 2008. When he was asked in the mid-1980s what aspect of art was most important for him, he replied: “The ability to experience, sensitivity. This is what leads man beyond this world. Where one person can become a magician for another. Where you live in a trance. Then you don’t really live in the real world, you live in a poetic reality in a retrieved poetic reality. Where you walk on clouds and don’t fall down. Where you walk on waves and don’t sink. Where you live beyond your bio.”^[25]