Erna Rosenstein
“Once Upon a Time”
New York, 69th Street
One of the key figures of the Polish avant-garde, Rosenstein’s wartime survival, commitment to Surrealism, and lifelong adherence to leftist ideologies course through a remarkable array of paintings, drawings, and assemblage sculptures, as well as poems, diaristic writings, and deceptively whimsical children’s stories. Steeped in an extraordinary history and responding to the Nazi occupation of Poland, personal traumas suffered in the Holocaust, the postwar sociopolitical upheaval of her native country, and passionate engagement in the intellectual circles of her times, Erna Rosenstein’s work defies simple classification. Her six-decades long career was fueled by the formation of prewar artistic, intellectual, and political affiliations, and is expressed through her continued oscillation between autobiographical figuration and biomorphic abstraction. Grappling with themes of memory, trauma, longing, and loss, she used paint, ink, and found materials to suggest a world tinged with allegory, enchantment, and fairy tale.
Wciąż patrzy (It Still Watches) Erna Rosenstein 1991 Collage, glass, paint, adhesive 31.5 x 25.5 cm / 12 3/8 x 10 in © The Estate of Erna Rosenstein / Adam Sandauer Courtesy Hauser & Wirth and Foksal Gallery Foundation Collection Galeria Szydłowski, Warsaw Photo: Marek Gardulski
‘Once Upon a Time’ has been organized by curator Alison M. Gingeras. The exhibition brings together over forty works never seen outside of Poland, including institutional loans of landmark paintings and works from The Estate of Erna Rosenstein being exhibited publicly for the first time since the artist’s death in 2004. ‘Erna Rosenstein. Once Upon a Time’ is Hauser & Wirth’s first presentation of the artist’s work since undertaking representation of her estate in 2019, in collaboration with Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw.
On the occasion of this exhibition, Hauser & Wirth Publishers will release a substantial publication offering new scholarship and research into Rosenstein’s work. This volume features new essays by Gingeras, and Dorota Jarecka, a leading Rosenstein scholar and Director of Galeria Studio in Warsaw, as well as a chronology by Aleksandra Ściegienna that integrates Rosenstein’s career within the broader sociopolitical context of postwar Poland, and the first English translation of an edited transcript of Rosenstein’s Shoah testimony. The publication is one of the first English language translations of Rosenstein’s writings, including a previously unpublished fairy tale, whose manuscript was only recently discovered. Also included is a selection of poems, and a reproduction of the artist’s unique yizkor (a memorial book commemorating a Jewish community destroyed during the Holocaust).About the Exhibition
