Now, everything has changed in terms of Irish-Polish relations.

As National Gallery director Raymond Keaveney says:

"Nowhere is this change more evident than in the influx of Polish people to Ireland, who have come here to seek work in our booming economy." The exchanges between Ireland and Poland are not simply economic, but cultural too.

It's in this context that a major exhibition, Paintings from Poland: Symbolism to Modern Art, has just opened in the Millennium Wing of the National Gallery of Ireland.

Not only does it give Irish viewers an insight into the achievements of Polish art, but it casts light on the history and culture of a country with which Ireland is building everincreasing ties.

On show are 74 masterpieces of Polish art spanning from 1880 to 1939 and selected from the National Museum in Warsaw, with additional loans from private collections and other galleries. Covering a fascinating, tumultuous period in the country's history, it charts Polish painting from the 19th century up to the Nazi invasion at the beginning of WWII.

Rather than simply documenting the development of Polish art across two generations of artists, the exhibition picks out prevailing trends and preoccupations that recurred even as styles developed and changed. In particular, it focuses on the enduring tendency towards symbolism. As Ferdynand B Ruszczyc, director of the National Museum in Warsaw, explains: "The focus of attention is on the meaning of the phenomenon of symbolism, a trend of profound implications for the style of Polish literary and artistic thinking and, despite the passage of time, remaining among the most characteristic intellectual trends of Polish culture."

By the end of the 18th century, the land of Poland had been divided between Russia, Prussia and the Hapsburg monarchy in three successive partitions. But while this meant that Poland as a nation had effectively been erased from the map, it lived on through art and culture.

So, at a time when symbolism was in many ways a political necessity . . . when the clothes you wore or the sequence of courses at a meal or even the way you saddled your horse could reveal a hidden meaning . . . it is not surprising there was a flowering of Polish symbolist painting towards the end of the 19th century. A powerful example of this is seen in one of the first paintings encountered at the exhibition: Stanczyk by Jan Matejko (1838-1893). Painted in 1862, it depicts a jester . . .

Stanczyk . . . slouched in a chair, his head bowed in brooding introspection, forgetting his customary role as a light entertainer to the royal court.

Outside, a comet shoots to earth, as if the heavens themselves are out of sync, while a glimpse of a brightly lit room in the background depicts a crowd of revellers enjoying a ball, unaware of the jester's foreboding mood.

Stanczyk seems aware of the fall that is to come: indeed, a document on the table beside him informs him of the 1514 capture of Smolensk by the Muscovy forces. Taken in the context of 19th century Poland, and painted as it was amidst the patriotic atmosphere that preceded the January Uprising against Russia in 1863, the painting becomes a lament for the loss of statehood, but also an affirmation of the country's historic past and cultural identity, as well as a reflection on its possible future.

The theatre, clowns, puppets, role-playing, dolls and the world of children became common tropes . . . fictional ways to illustrate an inherent truth.

This is reflected in a self-portrait (1914) by renowned symbolist painter Jacek Malczewski (1854-1929), in which he is clad in a medieval suit of armour with a pink flower drooping from the plating on his chest. He is effectively commenting upon the crucial role of the artist in society, as a veritable knight in shining armour, shaping . . . indeed saving . . . Polish culture and identity.

A darker scene is depicted in Edward Okun's (1872-1945) curious We and the War (19171923), which shows the artist and his wife striding across the foreground of the painting against an art-nouveau-style backdrop of fierce winged serpents biting each other.

Peeking out from behind the couple is a witch-like old lady, her presence potentially threatening.

Okun is holding a delicate flower in his hand, shielding it with his cloak to protect it from harm, as though he, as an artist, is protecting Polish identity from destruction.

Nature too takes on symbolic meaning in landscape paintings of this period. Nocturne . . . Swans in the Saxon Garden in Warsaw at Night (1894) by Jozef Pankiewicz (1866-1940), for example, is a dark, haunting scene depicting the swans as indistinct, blurred shapes. These swans could, however, be seen as a sign of hope . . . a glimpse of light emerging from the darkness.

Such hopes were realised at the end of the first World War, when Poland finally achieved independence in 1918. With this development, a younger "antisymbolist" generation of artists, tired with representing the past and with supposedly parochial concerns, began to seek new subjects and means of expression. A debate soon emerged between the merits of the traditional Polish art of the older generation and a wider European drive towards modernism. The desire to become separated from their symbolist forefathers was solidified when a number of artists formed the Polish Expressionists group in 1917, which subsequently became known as the Formists (19191922). Thus, the 20-year interwar period saw a flowering of formal experimentation in Poland, influenced by avant-garde international movements such as expressionism, cubism, futurism and abstraction.

At the same time, artists such as Tamara de Lempicka (18981980) were making a name abroad. Based in Paris during the 1920s, de Lempicka . . . who was "rediscovered" in the 1970s and is now perhaps one of the most internationally known artists featured in this exhibition . . . earned the title of "Deco diva", as much for her distinctive semicubist portraits as for her wild lifestyle.

The real world soon impinged on the world of art to far too great an extent, however. It is sadly fitting that this exhibition should conclude with the year 1939 . . . a time that marked a rupture, not only in Poland's history, but in its culture too. As Folga-Januszewska notes: "It is difficult to say in which direction artistic events would have evolved in Poland had it not been for the outbreak of WWII. After 20 years of freedom and unparalleled artistic activity, September 1939 brought unprecedented and unexpected trauma and mass destruction."

MAKING MUSIC: MAT JAZZ, DJ FALCON AND MACIEJ RAVS

MAT JAZZ is one of the founding members of Breakology, a Dublin-based collective who have been concentrating on playing breakbeat and bringing breakbeat-friendly acts to Dublin since October 2004.

www. myspace. com/breakologybeats

ORIGINALLY from Szczecin, DJ Falcon currently resides in Dundalk. Back in Poland, he's a noted turntableist, with his experimental hip-hop sets earning him countless accolades.

www. myspace. com/funkyfalc

FROMWschowa, Maciej Ravs is now based in Dublin and works as a DJ on Dublin City Anna Livia FM where he presents the Polish'Cultural Evening', while working on his own experimental sounds www. myspace. com/maciekrausmusic