The University of Warsaw Library Print Room established in 1818 has been the oldest public collection of prints and drawings in Poland, and by 1939 it had been the largest one too. Despite extensive losses suffered during World War II it has retained an outstanding position in the history of Polish collecting and collections due to the artistic and historic value of its holdings. At present the collection includes approximately 50,000 master and architectural drawings, single leaf prints and bound volumes of prints spanning the 16th to 20th century. Nearly all West European schools of graphic arts are present and the majority of works reflect 17th and 18th century artistic output in the field. The Print Room acquires, houses, preserves and provides access to the collections of prints and drawings and their curators are involved in various scholarly, exhibition and educational projects and activities.

Collection

The core of the holdings consists of King Stanisław August’s Print Room purchased for the University of Warsaw from the King’s successors in 1818. The collection includes (mostly 17th and 18th century) prints and drawings the majority of which are arranged according to their subjects and placed in characteristic boxes covered with leather, so-called royal portfolios. In the period between 1818 and 1821 Stanisław Kostka Potocki, who proposed the purchase of the afore-mentioned collection, donated to the University of Warsaw a considerable part of his own collection. All objects in question were transferred to the University of Warsaw Library opened in 1816 and the traditional name of the royal collection was assigned to the collection of all graphic works owned by the University.
After the collapse of the November Uprising the Print Room collections were transferred to Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire (1832), incorporated in the holdings of Academy of Fine Arts and expanded with the collections owned earlier by the Friends of Sciences Society in Warsaw and Eustachy Sapieha from Dereczyn. In 1923 the resolutions of the Treaty of Riga resulted in the restoration of the collections in question to the Library. In the period between 1924 and 1939 the collections were enhanced with acquisitions, such as the Archives of Tylman van Gameren, collections of Dominik Witke-Jeżewski, Izydor Krzemicki and Henryk Grohman.

World War II was a tragic period in the history of the Print Room, which suffered the loss of nearly 60% of the collection, including the reference library, photograph archives, inventories and catalogues. The Nazi occupying forces pillaged the most valuable objects and a large part of the collection was torched in the building of Krasiński Library after the collapse of Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The decisive attempts at reclaiming looted and lost properties immediately after the end of World War II enabled the Library to regain its severely decimated holdings and the Print Room was reopened as early as January 1946.