Collections

Marek Szwarc - Eugenia Markowa. Spaces of Community

The first year after Poland regained its independence meant an outburst of freedom, a new beginning of a different life for Polish and Jewish artists. The Jewish Lodz and Warsaw of that time would talk a lot about the young and bold of the avant-garde artistic and literary formation – Young-Yiddish).

Works of the artists bound to the group, among others Broderson, Marek Szwarc, Icchak Vincent Brauner, Jankiel Adler (MPOLIN-M549), and Henryk Barczyński (MPOLIN-M545) were a turning point for Jewish art in the interwar Poland. Through their art, the expressionist style, the avant-garde unity between word and image, the effacement of boundaries between different art forms (the conscious crossing of them) and the quest for Jewish National Art, found their original means of expression.

Before World War I, Marek Szwarc studied in Paris. Around this time, together with Josif Czajkow, Izaak Lichtenstein and Leo Koenig, he founded a magazine devoted to Jewish art Machmadim [Longed-for]. His return to Paris in 1920 (with his wife Gina), resulted in many unique works. Szwarc became one of the most important figures of European expressionism.

In his early 20s, Szwarc told his wife Gina: "We have our whole life ahead of us to search". (E. Markowa, "Choice", Warsaw 2015, p. 99). Their life together turned out to be a choice of their path of faith, not an easy one as it required a departure from Judaism, as well as a search for a separate path in art, their language of artistic and literary creation. Baptism was a profound religious experience for the artist; Catholicism, which he accepted with his wife in 1920, remained the essential spiritual source for the artist, who defined himself as a Jew-Christian.

The Szwarcs’ collection of artistic works, exhibition documentation, personal archives, letters and articles, and numerous photographs show an outstanding artist and his wife, Gina (Regina) Szwarc, née Pinkus (1895-1973), a writer and journalist publishing under the pseudonym Eugenia Markowa. Therefore, this is a story contained in works, letters and photographs about the artist, but also about the artistic and marital community of two people firmly rooted in the Polish-Jewish reality, who decided to change their religion and remain in the Jewish world. Thanks to the archive, we can look at the unusual union of two outstanding artists sharing their life, passion and artistic ambitions.

The Szwarcs Archive and the collection of works by Marek Szwarc were acquired by the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN in 2016, thanks to the financial support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

Renata Piątkowska

czytaj więcej