Erna Rosenstein, Eternal Light, 1981, mixed technique, 47 x 43,5 cm

This work by Erna Rosenstein (1913–2004) found its way into the Galeria Studio Collection in 1985, at a time when Zbigniew Taranienko was the gallery’s program manager. It was he who initiated the artist’s exhibition in 1984 under the title “Unexpected. Drawings, Things, Paintings.” The exhibition—in an unusual spatial arrangement—showed Rosenstein’s drawings, objects and paintings, including Eternal Light (1981).

The composition is part of a broad group of the artist’s works that mediate the memory of her parents, who were murdered during the Holocaust. In January 1942, entering the third year of war, the Nazis began their planned destruction of the Jewish people. In July of that year, during the period when transports to Treblinka were leaving from the Warsaw ghetto, Anna and Maximilian Rosenstein fell victim to a criminal who, in collaboration with the German extermination plan, was murdering and looting Jews in hiding. The artist dedicated her work, or at least a large part of it, to the memory of her loved ones, adapting and transforming motifs of portraits, trains, cellars, forests, stoves and chimneys. All these elements are discernible in the filigree drawing that covers the background of this composition. In the center—made from metal and foil— is a flame or spring. Its golden glow illuminates the scene of memory, like a spotlight aimed straight at the past.

Dorota Jarecka