"Fountain of Fire and SIlence," Erna Rosenstein, 1982.
Rosenstein (1913-2004) was Polish-Jewish and also a Holocaust survivor. She witnessed her parents being murdered by the Nazis when they attempted to escape the Lviv Ghetto, but Erna herself survived by hiding under various aliases until the war was over.
Both a painter and a writer, and a significant figure in the Surrealist movement, she was a leader of the Krakow Group, a modernist artists' collective, before and after the war.
Rosenstein's work reflected her times; in the late 60s, when Poland was in the grip of a anti-Semitic fervor, her work reflected that. Here she reflects the turbulence of Poland in the midst of the Solidarity struggle that would eventually topple the corrupt totalitarian regime. Against a background that resembles granite, some sketchy lines suggest a fountain of fire, or perhaps an erupting volcano.
From the Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, Warsaw.
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