Shanghai, China, December 19, 2025 – The Gierowski Foundation announced its support for the Fosun Foundation exhibition “That’s How the Light Gets In: The Art of Stefan Gierowski (1925–2022),” opening December 19, 2025 and running through January 25, 2026.
The exhibition is a major retrospective of Stefan Gierowski, a leading abstract artist in post World War II Europe, presenting around 40 significant works spanning more than sixty years of artistic practice. The Shanghai presentation follows two earlier retrospective presentations in China, at CAFA Art Museum and at GDMoA.
The Gierowski Foundation’s support is provided in service of the exhibition’s cultural and educational goals and the preservation and presentation of the artist’s legacy. This support is not an investment and does not involve any ownership, financial stake, or funding arrangement related to Fosun Foundation or the exhibition’s commercial operations.
Curated by British curator Philip Dodd, the exhibition is organized in four sections: Gierowski’s dialogue with science and early space exploration, his engagement with Chinese philosophical ideas including Laozi, his sustained exploration of light and color in abstract painting, and a section focused on watercolor works. Across these sections, the exhibition centers on “light” as both a physical and metaphysical theme in Gierowski’s work.
“The art of Stefan Gierowski is a revelation,” said Philip Dodd. “From the 1950s onwards, his art was engaged with space travel and the power of science, issues that make him our contemporary.”
Stefan Gierowski, born in Poland in 1925, began exhibiting internationally in the 1960s, with presentations that included institutions and events in the United States and Europe. Over the decades, his work entered major public collections, including the Centre Pompidou. In recent years, interest in his work has accelerated, with prominent exhibitions and critical attention in Europe and beyond.
The Fosun Foundation presentation is hosted with the support of the Gierowski Foundation, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in China, and the Cultural Department of the Embassy of Poland in China.Exhibition details
Title: That’s How the Light Gets In: The Art of Stefan Gierowski (1925–2022)
Venue: Fosun Foundation, Shanghai
Dates: December 19, 2025 to January 25, 2026
About the Gierowski Foundation
The Gierowski Foundation is the private philanthropic organisation of Józef Hubert Gierowski, a Polish businessman, philanthropist, and art collector. The Foundation supports projects in the arts, with a focus on advancing cultural work connected to Poland and to the legacy of Stefan Gierowski, one of the leading abstract painters of postwar Europe. Józef Hubert Gierowski comes from an artistic and academic family, he is the son of Stefan Gierowski, longtime professor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, and the nephew of Professor Józef Andrzej Gierowski, the historian who served as rector of Jagiellonian University from 1981 to 1987. Trained in architecture at Warsaw University of Technology, he spent 15 years abroad in the United States, France, Latin America, and Japan, where he was active in the art trade before returning to Poland. In the 1990s, he became known as one of the largest individual investors on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, later playing a significant role as the largest shareholder of Animex ahead of its strategic investment and eventual sale to Smithfield Foods, and he has also been active in real estate, including the acquisition of Warsaw’s historic Blue Palace (Pałac Błękitny) in 2000.