12.06.2008 | Schinkel Pavillon, Oberwallstraße 1, 10117 Berlin-Mitte

Schinkel Pavillon opening: Zofia Stryjeńska

Thursday, June 12, 2008 / 7-10 pm

Schinkel Pavillon, Oberwallstrasse 1, 10117 Berlin-Mitte, U6 Französische Strasse, U2 Hausvogteiplatz

Zofia Stryjeńska was an artist whose work was inspired by Polish folk art and rituals. Her original and multifaceted oeuvre from the 1920s to 1940s encompasses a plethora of diverse genres and media, including painting, stage design, toys, book illustration, interior decoration for transatlantic cruise ships, and ballet costumes. Under communism, her works were used—without the artist’s consent—as popular motifs to decorate mass-produced objects of state-owned industry and craft. Forced into oblivion, and missing the recognition she had enjoyed in her country during the pre-war years, the artist left Poland to live in France and Switzerland, where she died in 1976. Paulina Olowska curates a selection of documents about Stryjeńska and mass-produced objects produced from her imagery in an exhibition that pays homage to the artist and evinces the transmission of her prolific output into everyday life in Poland. Paulina Olowska’s new ensemble of paintings after Zofia Stryjeńska is on view at the Neue Nationalgalerie as part of the 5th berlin biennial. Zofia Stryjeńska was born in 1891 in Krakow (PL) and died in 1976 in Geneva, Switzerland. Paulina Olowska, born in 1976 in Danzig (PL), lives and works in Warsaw (PL) and Berlin (DE).