Teresa Żarnowerówna

Teresa Żarnowerówna (or Żarnower; – April 30, 1949) was a Polish avant-garde artist, painter, sculptor, scenographer, and architect.

Personal life Teresa Żarnowerówna was born in Targówek, Warsaw in either 1895 or 1897 (sources cannot agree) in a Polonized (assimilated) Jewish family. She had a brother, David Żarnower. She had an affair with a fellow artist and mountaineer Count Mieczysław Szczuka until his climbing accident death in 1927. In 1937, due to the increasingly precarious position of communists in Poland, she left to live in Paris, Spain, Portugal, and Canada, and eventually arrived as a refugee in the US, where she would remain until her early death.

She died 30 April 1949 at her apartment on 15 West 67th Street. The New York Times reported she "died unexpectedly" at age 48.

Artistic style and career Żarnowerówna is known for being a very versatile artist. She created sculptures and geometric abstract compositions painted on canvas or made in the form of color linocuts and drawings. She produced photo-montages, book covers, typography designs and propaganda posters, and participated in architectural projects. Her work was generally influenced by Russian Constructivism and the Dutch De Stijl movement. Her early paintings have been lost, but according to surviving descriptions, they depicted geometric, typographic compositions composed of diagonal lines, which introduced dynamism. Similarly, her abstract sculptures designed on the basis of the opposition between concave and convex planes have not been preserved. What works that were preserved can be found in the Museum of Art in Łódź. At the Warsaw School of Fine Arts, Żarnowerówna met Henryk Stażewski, Maria Łucja Nicz-Borowiakowa, and Szczuka. The four of them would later constitute the core of the Polish Constructivist avant-garde during the inter-war period, and she is considered a pioneer in the field.

Originally, she focused on sculpture. In 1920, her diploma work Akt won a prize in a sculpture competition organized by the Ministry of Art and Culture. In 1921, she made her debut in the Spring Salon of the Shortly thereafter she took part in The Jewish Museum's inaugural exhibition in 1947.

Political art and views Żarnowerówna had left-wing views, and many of her posters, print designs, and photomontages were a mixture of political propaganda and avant-garde art. Through her brother David, a doctor and an avid member of the Polish Communist Party, she was acquainted with Marxist ideology and became involved in the revolutionary movements taking place during the inter-war period. In 1928, she designed a whole series of election posters for the left-wing Workers and Peasants Unity party along with party leaflets. She also designed the graphic layout of a number of magazines: The Forge, a Worker Youth Monthly (1927), Literary Monthly (1929), and the publication of the Central Committee of the Polish Communist International section, Czerwony Sztandar (The Red Banner, 1931). In 1931 she signed the manifesto against torture of political prisoners. However, shortly thereafter Żarnowerówna ceased her artistic activities.

During her turbulent flight from Poland to the United States, Żarnowerówna created a cycle of photo-montages for the book The Defense of Warsaw, which sought to publicize Polish suffering during, and in the aftermath of, the German destruction of the city of Warsaw. Żarnowerówna later worked on a monumental bias-relief sculpture devoted to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (it was never completed).