BWA Contemporary Art Gallery in Katowice

Maria Jarema is one of the most eminent Polish artists. She studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. In the 1930s she was connected to the artistic avant-garde, represented by the Theatre of Artists Cricot and Grupa Krakowska (the Kraków Group). During Socialist Realist times she was one of the few artists who withdrew from  official cultural life.
Initially, she worked in sculpture. At the end of the 1930s her interests focused on painting, and she remained faithful to this genre until the end. The fascination with the expressiveness of dance and the effects of movement in space, which she first revealed in sculpture, went on to become the fundamental motif of her art. In her picture series, created using tempera and mono-typing, she developed a concept of integration of movement of forms, colours and light, achieved by means of the language of abstraction enriched with a subtle allusion to a human figure.
From 1956 she co-operated with Cricot 2 theatre of Tadeusz Kantor, and in 1957 she joined the Second Grupa Krakowska.
Just before she died, her artistic output was displayed at the 29th Venice Biennale.
The publication begins with a text by Mariusz Hermansdorfer, and ends with a catalogue of all works by Maria Jarema known to the author, a list of exhibitions, timeline and bibliography.

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