Jadwiga Maziarska: Assembly

Polish avant-garde artist

Jadwiga Maziarska was one of the most important voices of the Polish avant-garde. Her explorations in the field of “matter painting” were groundbreaking and far ahead of similar attempts by other local artists as well as contemporaries in other countries. Between 1934–39 she studied at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (with Erna Rosenstein and Tadeusz Kantor). During this period, she was closely associated with the 1st Krakow Group and the Cricot Theatre. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1939. At the same time, she was actively involved in political movements. From the 1940s to the 1990s, Jadwiga Maziarska created appliqués, paintings, collages, wax reliefs, spatial forms and sculptures that were influenced by science, phenomenology, mass photography, printed reproductions and newspaper clippings, from which she developed autonomous structures. This comprehensive monograph introduces the unusual artist and makes her known outside her home country.