Teresa Żarnower

Critical text

Teresa Żarnower (1897, Warsaw – 1949, New York) was a key figure in the Polish avant-garde movement. Born to a Jewish family, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1924, she co-founded BLOK. A magazine she edited and illustrated, BLOK featured works from other avant-garde artists and writers (i.e. Strzemiński, Stażewski, Berlewi, Kobro, Szczuka) and introduced theories of Suprematism, Neoplasticism, and Futurism. In 1927 she co-founded the radical left-wing political magazine The Lever. Her political engagement was evident in the posters for the Workers’ and Peasants’ Union and her work for Anatol Stern’s poem Europe. Fleeing Europe and looming fascism, she left behind nearly all her early constructivist oeuvre. Upon learning of her family’s death in concentration camps, Żarnower focused on documenting the Second World War. Her late works–i.e. the photomontages and gouaches on view at Back to the Future–reflected death, despair, and horrors of the Holocaust. Arriving in New York in 1943, she struggled to find recognition on the scene dominated by Abstract Expressionism. Despite contributions (i.e. a solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century), she died relatively unknown. Her legacy is that of a politically engaged artist who significantly impacted Constructivism and the broader avant-garde.

Text by Heike Munder

The artist’s voice

The poetics of lyrical eroticism – patterns flow into bodies, voluptuous or contorted with beseechingly outstretched hands – are juxtaposed with symbols of her destroyed past: guns, barbed wire, ruined houses.