Armand Vetulani

Armand Vetulani was a Polish art historian and educator, first director of the Zachęta.

Life

Armand Vetulani was the son of Eugeniusz Vetulani, brother of Zbigniew and Eugeniusz "Gajga". During the German occupation of Poland he was an underground educator, which was constantly threatened by the death penalty. Joanna Kulmowa remembered him from that period as a "wonderful teacher". In her 1971 novel Trzy Kulmowa introduced a character called Dorian whose prototype was Vetulani.
During the interbellum Vetulani worked in Warsaw at the Fine Arts Section of the Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Education.
After the war he was artistic director at a Milanówek silk factory. From 1949 he was director of the Zachęta, newly reopened, the central national art institution in Warsaw. In 1954 he was stripped of his office after refusing to join the Polish United Workers' Party, according to Vetulani's long-time collaborator and friend, Bożena Kowalska. In 1952 he received Gold Cross of Merit.
Since 1953 he taught at the State Visual Arts Gathering in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, an institution led by a painter Edward Kokoszko. Since 1954 until 1955 he was a Head of Documentation of Contemporary Visual Arts Department at The Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
He authored several works in art history, including a 1952 monograph on Wojciech Gerson and a chapter on realistic painting in A History of Polish Art, edited by Bożena Kowalska.
For many years he remained single. In his later years he married his long-time friend and secretary Barbara. They had no children.