Kajetan Sosnowski (1913 Wilno – 1987 Warszawa), a leading avant-garde artist of the interwar period, created a concept and  initiated the Gallery 72 in Chełm. His sentiment to Chełm, a town 250 km away from Warsaw, was rooted in the fact that he spent his childhood and early youth there (1920-1934). The name of the gallery Sosnowski proposed originated from the year of its foundation. Sosnowski found a supporter of his brave initiative of promoting avant-garde art in the provincial environment in the person of Zenon Stachura, then a head of Culture Department of the Regional Council in Chełm. The gallery started operating in September 1972 with an exhibition of Jan Dobkowski’s painting. From the very beginning the Gallery 72 has been associated with Chełm Regional Museum. Its premises were located in the former monastery (1667-1726), adjoining the late baroque church. In spring 1973 Sosnowski’s indisposition disabled him to continue his further engagement in the gallery issues. Its management was taken over by Bożena Kowalska, a renowned art critic and close friend of Sosnowski. She defined the profile of the gallery and made it one of the most significant exhibition spaces in Poland. Kowalska kept managing it till 2000. A derivative, and at the same time the utmost value of the Gallery 72 is a  collection of contemporary art belonging to the Chełm museum. The collection is dominated by geometrical abstraction, the language which enables the artists to express their attitude and creative message. The other section of this collection is focused on a widely approached metaphorical trend. From 2001 the exhibitions in the Gallery 72 have been organized by Contemporary Art Department of the museum, headed by the art historian  Jagoda Barczyńska.

For over 37 years of its activity there have been presented 203 exhibitions: 176 one-man shows (some of the artists were exhibited twice, including 21 artists from outside Poland) and 28 group shows. In nine of them there were exhibited works of deceased artists. Among artists had their one-man shows forty-one are dead now. The significance of the Gallery 72 and its collection is best proved by the status of the artists and their works. The nature of this publication allows mentioning only the most important artists, among which the figure of Kajetan Sosnowski, the gallery founder is closest to our hearts. The major Polish artists featured  in the Chełm collection are: Henryk Stażewski, Jan Ziemski, Jerzy Grabowski, Jerzy Kałucki, Ryszard Winiarski, Jan Berdyszak, Kazimierz Ostrowski, Stanisław  Fijałkowski, Jerzy Nowosielski, Roman Opałka, Tadeusz Brzozowski, Zbigniew Dłubak, Stefan Gierowski, Jonasz Stern, Jadwiga Maziarska, Marian Bogusz, Edward Krasiński, Jan Tarasin, Józef Szajna, Andrzej Dłużniewski, Koji Kamoji, Andrzej Szewczyk, Jerzy Bereś, Kazimierz Mikulski, Natalia Lach Lachowicz, Janusz Przybylski, Józef Robakowski, Wojciech Fangor, Wanda Gołkowska, Jan Chwałczyk, Aleksandra Jachtoma, Janusz Kapusta, Adam Marczyński, Stefan Krygier, Janusz Orbitowski, Zdzisław Jurkiewicz, Maria Michałowska, Tadeusz Wiktor, Grzegorz Sztabiński, Jan Pamuła, Marek Sapetto, Adam WsiołkowskiHanna Zawa-Cywińska, Mieczysław Wiśniewski, Adam Myjak, Julian Raczko, Edward Dwurnik, Tomasz Zawadzki. The foreign section of the Chełm collection includes the works of renowned artists, including Josef Albers, Getulio Alviani, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Max Bill, Gerhard Blum-Kwiatkowski, Hartmut Böhm, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Milan Dobeš, Gerhard von Gravenitz, Anthony Hill, Ad de Keijzer, Richard Paul Lohse, Heinz Mack, Almir Mavignier, Bruno Munari, François Morellet, Georg Karl Pfahler, Michael Seuphor, Klaus Staudt, Jeffrey Steele and Victor Vasarely.  The Chełm collection of contemporary art contains 2000 items, including paintings, graphics, sculptures, photographs and installations, among them 397 works of foreign artists and 158 works of Polish artists leaving abroad.

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