The Tenderness of Home and the Weight of History: Wilhelm Sasnal’s “family / history” Exhibition

In the heart of London on Savile Row, Sadie Coles HQ is hosting one of contemporary painting’s most powerful and melancholic voices — Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal. The exhibition titled “family / history”, which opened today, collides the warm, sheltered cocoon of domestic life with the shattering world of macro-politics on the same canvas, with simultaneous energy.

After training as an architect and turning to painting, Sasnal brings his cinematic perspective to his canvases. In this new exhibition, he takes us on a shattering journey into both our most intimate memories and our collective memory.

A Dual Reality: From the Living Room to the Oval Office

The exhibition’s title “family / history” perfectly summarises the inevitable duality of the subjects Sasnal addresses. On one side are the intimate, tender portraits belonging to the artist’s inner world and his family. On the other lies a vast political and cultural sphere that extends beyond domestic comfort, shaping it, expanding it, and often destabilising it.

Have you ever noticed how the heavy and disturbing images raining down on us from global news bulletins are softened — or contrasted — within the safe environment of our homes? Sasnal precisely documents this layered human experience. In the exhibition, scenes from family life sit alongside images of spaces of power such as the Oval Office or a NATO summit, and the “greyed-out” faces of politicians.

“Cover Versions” of Existing Images

The artist describes his paintings as “cover versions” of existing photographs or images. Whether drawn from archival historical memories or photographs he himself has taken, each painting actually points to a secondary image hidden behind the canvas.

However, Sasnal does not copy these original images exactly; instead, he reduces them (creating a reductive relationship):

• Colours change or are simplified.
• Details are deliberately erased from the canvas.
• Patterns and graphics are exaggerated as painterly gestures.

Just like memory itself — never entirely reliable, yet managing to preserve the feeling of those touching moments… These paintings do not offer us a rigid reality, but the essence of that moment or event.

Music, Admiration and Nostalgia

Alongside family and politics, another theme to which Sasnal returns with great passion appears in the exhibition: musicians. The artist’s portraits of musicians expand the autobiographical resonance of the works. We witness how a single admired musician can summon an entire era, place, or feeling. After years of distance, the artist returns to the past and summarises the experienced or witnessed moments as if in a painted album.