Objects

Image showing miners wearing helmets, uniforms, and boots: one is sitting with his back turned to the viewer, the other is facing forward, with his head propped up on his right arm. They are pictured in a mine tunnel. (The tunnel is drawn with thick black lines, vertical on the sides, horizontal, and diagonal at the top.)

The work is drawn in black ink, applied in broad brush strokes on a thick sheet of paper. The lines in pencil visible near the left edge are traces of the underdrawing.

The composition forms part of a cycle depicting workers protesting the imposition of martial law in Poland. Krystyna Pajes produced the work in Sweden (where she stayed following her departure from Poland in the aftermath of the March 1968 events); it was her reaction to the news of the pacification of mines by the authorities of People’s Poland in December 1981.

She named a specific mine on the reverse: Piast. Located in Bieruń Nowy, it has gone down in Polish history as one of the two mines – alongside Ziemowit in Lędziny – where the strikes lasted the longest and had the largest number of participants (at first, a bit under 2,000 miners protested in each, and as many as half of them remained underground until the end of the strike: on 28 December, they ran out of food and water).

Written by Przemysław Kaniecki