Born in Tarnów in 1972, Wilhelm Sasnal studied architecture at the Tadeusz Kościuszko University in Kraków. He then turned to the visual arts and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.
Until 2000, he exhibited with the artists’ collective Grupa Ładnie – a Polish term meaning ‘pretty’ – which depicted the most mundane aspects of contemporary life using an aesthetic that appeared ‘unprofessional’, in contrast to academic teaching. He works in a wide range of other media – photography, graphic novels, films, videos… He tackles everyday subjects, historical figures, views of Kraków, as well as snapshots of friends or family members. He also appropriates images found on the internet and in the mainstream media.
He has exhibited internationally in major solo exhibitions, notably Painting as Prop at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2024) and at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2024), Under the Asphalt at the Longlati Foundation, Shanghai (2023), Such a Landscape at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw (2021) and Sadie Coles HQ, London (2020), ENGINE at the Kistefos-Museet, Jevnaker (2018), and Sleep at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2018).
Together with Anka Sasnal, he has written and directed feature films, including The Assistant (2025), We Haven’t Lost Our Way (2022) and The Sun, the Sun Blinded Me (2016).