Women Painting the Sea

“Women Painting the Sea” is a continuation of a series presenting maritime and river landscape paintings from the Polish museums’ collections. This year’s exhibition attempts to introduce to the wider public works of Polish women artists from the 19th and 20th centuries.

It used to be the case that professional activity was restricted to men only while women were expected to take care of the home. First in the 20th century, after the First World War, women received opportunities and access to education in state art schools and full access to the European artistic universities. However, they were thought to have fewer skills than men. For the first time at the beginning of 1900 they were allowed to paint nude drawings. For many years they did not study anatomy or composition. The social and cultural standards heavily limited their possibilities for painting in the open air.

In our exhibition we are showing works of women who in spite of all the obstacles managed to make a successful artistic career. The most famous one is without any doubt Olga Boznańska, an artist well recognised all over Europe, who has created her own, unique artistic language having its roots in impressionism. The presented artists represent a huge variety of styles, from the traditional realism of Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowiczowa, through Art Deco, to avant-garde formism – the Polish cubism of Maria Junkiewicz-Rogoyska. At the exhibition we will see marina pictures painted by Bronisława Rychter-Janowska from her Italian journey, and also paintings chronicling the construction of the Gdynia port by Michalina Krzyżanowska. A real collector’s item is a series of pictures painted by Zofia Stryjeńska for decoration of the tourist drawing room on M.S. Batory.

The purpose of the series “Polish Artists about the Sea”, organised every summer, is to give a comprehensive presentation of maritime painting as a distinct set of phenomena against the background of Polish artistic life and not as isolated, random artistic events, often forgotten in a plethora of other information. Recurrence of the event helps in systematic promotion of maritime art and monographic focus supports comparative analysis between the painters and between the schools of painting.

Similarly to our previous exhibitions in the series, the catalogue produced in our Museum accompanies the exhibition.

“Women Painting the Sea”
The Granaries 29.05.2008 – 31.08.2008