Objects

A depiction of female prisoners of the Auschwitz camp: busts of six women.

This is one of the illustrations to the story "Zina" by Maria Zarębińska-Broniewska. Its title character is a prisoner, a Ukrainian woman from Voroshilovgrad (now: Lugansk), who at one point refuses to follow orders, which the other female prisoners unsuccessfully try to dissuade her from.

The motif of differently arranged heads, including one turned upside down, may refer to the issue of mental balance of the camp prisoners (Zina was considered mentally ill: "I saw her on Christmas Eve. She was sitting high up on the bed, naked, in a cage for lunatics and waiting quietly for death", p. 87).

The hairstyles of the three heads in the upper part of the composition seem to refer to Renaissance representations of women.

The inner edges of the painted frame are straight, the outer edges are unfinished, with visible brush marks. The artist did not have to take care to close the outer elements of the composition, which was to be handled by the publisher's graphic designers).

In the printed version of the work, the brown retinas of the woman's eyes at the bottom – slightly differently than in the prototype version – are directed to the right (not to the left); apart from this detail, the work is identical with the published one (apart from differences resulting from print quality).

At the time of donation to the POLIN Museum the object was placed on a cardboard backing (width: 19–20.3 cm, height: 31–31.8 cm), to which the corners of the canvas had been glued by means of diagonally placed pieces of tape. On the front of the cardboard, at the bottom, there are inscriptions in pencil:

grey

black } grid

sepia

brown

mask of lights

The work had a small rectangular card glued at the bottom with vertical and horizontal dashes crossing close to the centre, marking the vertical and horizontal of the work.

Przemysław Kaniecki