Maria Jarema: Cracked Modernism – A Pioneering Polish Avant-garde Exhibition in Warsaw

This exhibition offers a new perspective on the work of Maria Jarema, a significant figure in Polish modern art. It explores her artistic journey from the interwar period through the post-war era, highlighting her engagement with abstraction, surrealism, and expressionism, and her development of the monotype technique as a means of personal and political expression.

The exhibition 'Maria Jarema. Cracked Modernism' provides a fresh look at one of the most original figures in Polish modern art from the interwar and post-war periods. Jarema, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, was a co-founder of the politically engaged avant-garde Grupa Krakowska and collaborated with the experimental Cricot theatre. She embraced international modernism, drawing from post-Cubist abstraction, surrealism, and expressionism. In the post-war era, Jarema championed artistic freedom, rejecting socialist realism and developing her monotype technique from 1949. This technique allowed her to express the self as a whole, encompassing apparent contradictions and tensions. The exhibition's curators term her style 'cracked modernism,' interpreting her work as an exploration of the body and self across various contexts: individual relationships, family, and broader community. The exhibition is arranged by this escalating scale, revealing social tensions and the disintegration of the self in her depictions of the body. It also features works by Polish, French, Swiss, and Italian artists with whom Jarema engaged in dialogue, showcasing her independent voice and her understanding that "without deformation, transposition, metaphor, abstraction – we are unable to grasp and express the escalating conflicts of feelings and matters today." The exhibition showcases Jarema's oeuvre from all periods, including her late cycles like 'Wyrazy,' 'Penetracje,' and 'Filtry,' where monotype layers intertwine with painterly forms. These works suggest movement and create vibrating spatial structures, interpretable as a new language of relating to the world through interdependence. The exhibition also presents nearly her entire library for the first time, providing insight into her intellectual and artistic biography. It includes works by artists she admired or debated with, such as Jean-Michel Atlan, Hans Hartung, Henri Matisse, and Tadeusz Kantor, underscoring her persistent pursuit of intellectual and artistic experiences despite her premature death at fifty.

Tickets for the exhibition can be purchased online. Visitors are directed to the museum's ticketing portal for booking and availability.