Artystki polskie i ich sztuka w latach 1900–1939. Cz. III. Przedstawicielki koloryzmu

Abstrakt

MARIA ZIENTARA, POLISH WOMEN ARTISTS AND THEIR ART IN THE PERIOD 1900–1939. PART III. REPRESENTATIVES OF COLOURISM

In the period 1918–1939 the fact that Polish women had gained access to national institutions of higher artistic education (in 1904 they were granted the right to study at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts, while other Polish institutions of higher artistic education opened their doors to them after 1918) initiated the development of professional “women’s art” created by Polish women artists formally educated at fine arts academies. In 1938 there were about 380 women actively pursuing their artistic careers in Poland. The range of themes, motifs and genres they used was much wider than that of their 19th-century predecessors. Polish women artists had thus entered the dynamically evolving sphere of modern art. Their abundant and diverse artistic production contributed signifi cantly to the multifarious, eclectic phenomenon that the art of the interwar period was – the prolific mixture of different currents, trends and artistic vogues. From 1924 onwards post-Impressionism started to play a more and more important role in Polish art, and in the 1930s it became the predominant style among Polish painters. Post-Impressionism shifted all accents to colour, and women’s input in the development of this style was crucial. Women were present in all the artistic groups and movements representing colourism in Poland, and some of them chose to work independently of any group or movement. The most eminent female representatives of colourism include such artists as Hanna Rudzka-Cybis, Dorota Berlinerblau-Seydenman, Janina Przecławska-Strzałecka, Janina Süsle-Muszkiet, Wanda Ślędzińska, Krystyna Łada-Studnicka, Łucja Oźmin, Krystyna Dąbrowska, Wanda Chełmońska, Alicja Halicka, Cecylia Marylska, Mela Muter (Maria Melania Mutermilch), Olga Neyman, Zofia Piramowicz, Elżbieta Hirszberg, Gizela Hufnagel (Kilimaszewska, Arct), Mary Litauer (Schneider), Stanisława Centnerszwer, Julia Acker and Irena Weiss (Aneri). The themes that recurred most frequently in the art produced by female colourists included landscapes, portraits and still lifes, genre scenes and nudes being less popular. Compared to male artists working in that period, Polish female colourists very rarely painted genre scenes with a complex narrative content and nudes (male nudes being particularly rare). The social roles played by women artists conditioned the thematic range of the representations they produced. Women were prone to depict that which was most easily accessible via their life experience. Their representations of the various aspects of such spheres of life as family, motherhood, the feminine condition, or interpersonal relations were often closer to the everyday, real-life experience than the much stronger conventionalized representations produced by their male contemporaries which revealed an inclination for artificial generalisation and conventionality in the spirit of symbolism, piquancy and voyeurism. On the other hand, women artists would often use the male point of view intentionally: if they wanted their art to be noticed and appreciated, they had to use the forms of representation that had already been fixed and generally accepted in the public imagination. Not unlike women artists representing other trends in art, it was seldom, if ever, that female colourists gained prestige and high artistic status comparable to that enjoyed by their male fellow artists, even though they did have the same academic education. So far, the brand new cultural phenomenon that the art of professional women artists in the 1st half of the 20th century was has not received as much critical appreciation from art historians as it deserves, considering its significant scale and quality. Apart from the rare exceptions made for the unquestionable leaders, women artists’ creative output remains largely marginalized. Their works constitute only a tiny part of museum collections – a situation that prevails mainly because women’s art is still regarded as a rather obscure subject in the history of art. It was not until the 1990s that it started to attract wider interest and gain general recognition.