During Artissima 2024 Import Export presents a rare collection of gouaches from the estate of Teresa Żarnower as part of "Back to the Future" section curated by Heike Munder and Jacopo Crivelli Visconti.
Teresa Żarnower - influential Polish Jewish artist (1897–1949), celebrated leader of the Constructivist movement and co-founder of the Polish avant-garde known in her lifetime for her radical Constructivism and political photomontages, later documenting the Second World War also painted powerful gouaches (1942–48), the importance of which cannot be overstated.
In 1946, Peggy Guggenheim showed 16 of these gouaches at Art of This Century; the accompanying text by Barnett Newman placed Żarnower in the zeitgeist that gave New York primacy in visual arts. In 1948, they toured to San Francisco Museum of Art and on to Minnesota Museum, before disappearing for 60 years.
Following Żarnower’s tragic and unexplained death in 1949, painstaking research by art historians located a collection of work in New York, preserved by the family of Żarnower’s nephew. Finally, her untold story, along with these gouaches, was presented in a long-overdue 2014 retrospective at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. Import Export is honored to present these works at Artissima this year.
Photo courtesy: Flavio Palasciano @
