Maria Jarema
Maria Jarema was a Polish painter, sculptor, scenographer and actress. She was a founder of the interwar leftist avant-garde Kraków Group. In addition to her own artistic practice, Jarema was a long-time collaborator of the Polish painter and playwright Tadeusz Kantor.
Life and career
Early career (1920s-1930s)
She was born on 24 November 1908 in Staryi Sambir in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. In the years 1929–1935, she studied sculpture at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, under supervision of Xawery Dunikowski. In 1932, she co-founded the avant-garde, radical left Kraków Group. Jarema was an outspoken leftist during the interwar period and supported labor movements in Poland and abroad. She also designed a memorial in Kraków for socialists and communist activists killed during the 1934 Paris strikes. She was one of the founders of the avant-garde theatre Cricot alongside Józef Jarema, Henryk Gotlib and Zbigniew Pronaszko.Postwar period (1945-1958)
Before the outbreak of World War II, Jarema worked primarily as a sculptor but after 1945 she focused on painting. Following the period of Socialist Realism in Poland and as a result of the subsequent Thaw, she turned to abstraction. Since 1951, she created monotypes. Using this printmaking technique and sometimes combining it with oil paints and distemper, she created her most famous cycles of paintings: Penetracje and Rytmy. Her works reflected an engagement with the human form and its place in space as well as the depiction of movement in painting. Balancing between anthropomorphic and abstract forms is also a distinctive feature of her postwar work. Beyond painting, Jarema continued her artistic collaboration with Tadeusz Kantor and his experimental theatre Cricot 2.In 1955, Jarema was diagnosed with leukemia and later received treatment in Paris. In 1958, her works were shown at the Polish pavilion at the 29th Venice Biennale. Her health deteriorated that summer and she underwent an experimental bone marrow transplant in October. Jarema died in Kraków on November 1, 1958 from complications from leukemia.