The apartment is a visual archive of both Mr. Krasinski’s and Mr. Stazewski’s work, though after the latter’s death in 1988 his family removed almost all of his paintings. Mr. Krasinski’s goal was to keep the traces of the friend who had helped support him financially over the years. The studio became a kind of living art installation, with the wires left hanging and discoloration on the walls where Mr. Stazewski’s paintings had been displayed.

Since Mr. Krasinski’s death in 2004, the institute has been run by the Foksal Gallery Foundation, or F.G.F., one of the most prominent commercial galleries in Poland, and though it is still owned by his daughter, F.G.F. has a 20-year contract to administer the space.

The “institute” is meant to perpetuate the avant-garde movement, said Andrzej Przywara, F.G.F.’s chairman and co-founder. “The name is a little big ironic and it’s more like the name of the project than a serious institute with structure,” he said. “Our aim was to protect this place, so we decided not to move this installation to a museum, because then you have to decide what is art and what is not.”

The artistic history of the apartment dates to 1963, when the Communist government gave the space to Mr. Stazewski, who was considered a living legend within both the Polish and European avant-garde art scenes. Born in Warsaw, the artist was one of the original members of the Polish Constructivist avant-garde movement as well as one of the founders of the Muzeum Sztuki w Lodzi (Art Museum of Lodz), one of the oldest continuously run modern art museums in the world. In the 1920s and 1930s, Mr. Stazewski frequently exhibited in Europe and gained an international reputation.

The majority of his works from this time were destroyed during World War II. After the war, Mr. Stazewski continued to be an artistic renegade, despite the restrictions of Communism, taking part in international exhibitions of Polish contemporary art and co-founding the Geometric Abstract movement in the 1960s. His work varied from abstract pieces like “Relief 6” (1968) — five rows of purple, blue, green, orange and pink squares that look as if they are dancing — to “Figural Composition” (1950), a painting of what looks like a weeping angel, that was influenced by Socialist Realism and Cubism.