The Julian Fałat Museum (Fałatówka) is a branch of the Historical Museum in Bielsko-Biała. It is located in a villa with a garden. Julian Fałat lived and painted here for nearly twenty years. The artist bought the house in 1909 and two years later he built a larch wood workshop above it which burnt down in 1935. After the painter’s death, the plot and the house were handed down to his children, daughter Helena Niemczewska and son Kazimierz Fałat. The latter maintained the villa until 1943, renting rooms to holidaymakers or the Society of Friends of Bystra in the Silesian Beskids. After the war Kazimierz, a soldier in the German army and taken captive in Italy, settled in Great Britain. In 1947 the real estate was taken over by the State Treasury as property formerly belonging to German nationals. It was given over to the Centre for Creative Works and as living accommodation for residents of the village. The idea to found a biographical and artistic museum here dedicated to the prominent watercolourist was first propounded in May 1945, but, owing to various circumstances, was not realised until August 1973 when the ‘Julian Fałat Artistic and Historical Museum in Bystra’, constituting a branch of the Museum in Bielsko-Biała, was finally opened to the public. After the second half of the 1940s the Museum of Bielsko made every effort to secure the artist’s extant legacy in the villa, collect his works and all manner of archival material, and organise lectures and exhibitions aimed at promoting his work both in Bielsko-Biała and other Polish cities. The first permanent exhibition comprised the artist’s works in watercolour and oils, archive material, furniture, painting tools and other memorabilia associated with Julian Fałat. The museum exhibition rooms have undergone several phases of modernisation over the last decades, the last ones being in 2013 and 2015. The exhibition itself has constantly expanded to include additional works by Julian Fałat, other artists’ compositions from the painter’s own collection and a broader range of archival material, including all manner of memorabilia, documentation, photographs, correspondence to and from the artist, certificates, personal belongings and equipment forming part of the interior design of the house when it was still lived in by Fałat. Nowadays Fałatówka in Bystra, a branch of the Historical Museum in Bielsko-Biała, presents artwork created using a variety of techniques by the master of watercolour painting himself, with exhibits from his own collections, and supplemented by archival material. Staff at the Bielsko Museum are constantly striving to further expand this site.

[Ed. TDB]