MONUMENTS TO RESISTANCE: ART ON THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING (1943-1956)
“Monuments to Resistance: Art on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943-1956)” is an exhibition opened on the 80th anniversary of the April 1943 Uprising. Thanks to the work and queries of the curators, we can see how important this event was for post-war artists, and how diverse the way it was presented.
“We present how extensive the collections at the Jewish Historical Institute are. We have valuable works of art, historical memorabilia, and photographs stored here from the beginning of the institute’s existence (1947). They illustrate the Jewish memory of the Uprising and emphasize the heroism of the fighters. The exhibition is our tribute to the combatants and civilians. It is important that the presented works were created by artists for whom the World War II and the German occupation was an important generational experience,” says Monika Krawczyk, director of the Jewish Historical Institute.
Posters are an important part of the exhibition. During the anniversary celebrations of the Ghetto Uprising in 1947 and 1948, the Central Committee of Jews in Poland and the Jewish Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts organized two competitions for commemorative posters. An integral part of them was the poster competition.
“Posters were sent by artists who did not participate in the fight and did not see what was happening in the ghetto. Their artistic proposal, on the other hand, allows us to see how the memory of the Uprising was shaped and what phenomena and attitudes the authors decided to emphasize. The JHI collection includes works by Eryk Lipiński and Andrzej Wajda, among others,” says curator Marta Kapeluś from the Jewish Historical Institute.
It is worth noting that there was almost no one who survived the uprising and could illustrate their experiences. All the more valuable are the drawings by Halina Ołomucka, which open the exhibition, dated 1943. Their mood and the way it presents the combatants are extremely moving, far from the customary emphasis on their heroism and courage.
The exhibition presents a wide selection of works of art: paintings, posters as well as drawings, photographs, sculptures, and metalwork from the era. Among the artists whose works will be on display, it is worth mentioning, among others, Tadeusz Kulisiewicz, Natan Rapoport (author of the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes), Alina Szapocznikow, Henryk Hechtkopf, and Tadeusz Gronowski. The exhibition also includes a wide selection of characteristic socialist realist works.
“Socialist realist performances are an uneasy continuation of the extensive efforts to ensure the social visibility of the uprising, undertaken by the Jewish community in the 1940s, when – already from 1945, and especially from 1948 – photographs testifying to the Holocaust and the armed struggle in the Ghetto became more and more widely known,” says the curator of the exhibition, Dr. Piotr Słodkowski from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a program of events (meetings, guided tours, and film screenings) as well as a richly illustrated catalog presenting in an extended scope the results of queries carried out by the curators.
“Monuments to Resistance...” is the largest and so far the most diverse presentation of works of art about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, spanning between 1943 and 1956. The exhibition includes works by Alina Szapocznikow, Natan Rapoport, Tadeusz Kulisiewicz, and Andrzej Wajda, as well as drawings by Halina Ołomucka, created during the uprising.
Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute
A new temporary exhibition at the Jewish Historical Institute Emanuel Ringelblum
in Warsaw is already open