Erna Rosenstein - On the Other Side of Silence

Erna Rosenstein is a key figure of the postwar avant-garde in Poland, a representative of Surrealism, and a poet. Against the backdrop of the Shoah and historic upheavals in Poland, her works bear witness to the resilience of an artist, who never wavered in her political convictions and artistic ideals. After World War II, Rosenstein developed an expressive pictorial language to visualize the unspeakable experiences of collective and personal trauma. As a way of remembering and processing the past, over many decades she repeatedly engaged with the brutal murder of her parents in her work. Based on her paintings, assemblages, and drawings, the catalog accompanying the exhibition at the Belvedere in Vienna encourages critical reflection on the processing and preservation of personal and collective histories.