Erna Rosenstein was born into a Jewish family, and this fact significantly influenced her life. Growing up in Lviv, Ukraine, she reached adulthood in 1933, the same year Adolf Hitler gained power in Germany. Moreover, she identified as a communist, which added another layer of complexity to her existence.
Communism
In 1918, after relocating to Krakow, Poland, she established a communist group at her school. Despite her family’s financial hardship, her parents decided to send her to Vienna to study law, hoping she would abandon her radical ideas. Instead, she remained steadfast, joining the communist international club, overseeing leaflet printing and distribution, and eventually leaving her law studies behind to pursue art instead.
Surrealism
Rosenstein returned to Krakow in 1938 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. While there, she visited Paris and attended a renowned Surrealist exhibition organized by luminaries including Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, and Paul Éluard. Her trajectory might have been different had she not been detained during a demonstration on May 1st. Fortunately, her case was left unresolved when the war erupted, prompting her family to secure their home in Krakow and return to Lviv, hoping for a swift end to the conflict.
Trauma
The onset of true tragedy arrived when her family was confined to a ghetto. Initially, conditions were manageable—they created false documents for potential escape, and she even helped run an art cooperative with her mother. However, the situation deteriorated, leading the family to flee to Warsaw, where they were ultimately captured. Tragically, her parents were murdered, leaving her to endure the aftermath alone. The emotional scars from these events would haunt her, with art and poetry serving as her primary coping mechanisms.
Post-War Reality
Once the war ended, Rosenstein faced numerous challenges, including frequent changes to her name and identity to evade danger. She took on various jobs such as waitressing and sewing, frequently moving across towns and countries. Upon confronting the socialist landscape of post-war Poland, her views on Communism transformed, notably because her imaginative work was initially barred from public exhibition. This dynamic shifted towards the late 1960s when she finally held her first exhibition and began to receive recognition in the 1970s.
Epilogue
So why label her a Surrealist in a context where Surrealism wasn’t widely recognized? Poland never had the opportunity to embrace the Surrealist movement as the Surrealist Manifesto emerged in 1924 amidst the New Objectivity movement and Expressionism in Polish art. The significant exhibition in 1938 could have altered the landscape, but with the onset of war in 1939, artistic expression was halted. As post-war art academies developed, socialist realism became dominant, pushing alternative artistic expressions underground.
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