3. Women
English version | Wersja polska
It is remarkable how much attention Andrzej Wróblewski paid to women in his work - mothers, wives, girlfriends, modern women. He repeatedly portrayed a particular female model, whom we can see in the painting Sauce-ish Portrait, Portrait with a Red Face. A fully shaped matron with a chubby and thoughtful face and hardworking hands who becomes synonymous with the unconditional care and security that only a mother can give. The artist presented another version of the model in the monumental work Look Out, it Comes! Air Raid, The Air Raid of 1955, where a woman, like a dam, protects helpless infants during the air raid alarm and bombing with her entire huge body, bursting the composition of the painting. She becomes a barrier, a bulwark bringing safety to her children who fall asleep in her arms peacefully. Her meaningful gaze filled with awareness of the impending danger stands in contrast to her body which, like a great mountain range, protects the valley from the hurricane of an avalanche.
The above-mentioned model was painted by Wróblewski also in the series of Chaired– portraits of aching, resigned women seated on chairs. Stopped in this one second of rest, from their roles - not defined by themselves, not easy and demanding. At that time their roles were surely underestimated. Wróblewski notices a woman and pays homage to her, makes her the subject and lets her rest. This is a testimony of an extraordinary sensitivity of a young twenty-year-old man in the 1950s, many years before even thinking of any feminist perspective.
The portraits of women seated on chairs with time turn into paintings of Queues – rows of nameless people waiting in time and beyond time. In Wróblewski’s paintings, chairs are arranged in a line, one behind the other. On these chairs there are people condemned to passive waiting, all facing in the one and only possible direction – Chaired. Their tired cast down eyes intensify the impression of hopelessness and stagnation, showing the confrontation with reality in which the younger, resilient and socially engaged generation becomes the symbol of change. In this world, however, there are also people who gradually lose their subjectivity and turn into objects - chairs, elements of everyday dull existence. Their bodies merge with the space and create an atmosphere of waiting for something that will never come. In this condition there is no room for any action - the horizon becomes distant and the prospect of awakening - unattainable. This is in most cases a portrayal of Stalinist everyday reality of postwar Poland, concentrating on official context and resettlement issues, devoid of respect for ordinary citizens. People at railway stations, people in queues, participants of political manifestations, men after work.
The situation is similar in Hunchback, Woman in an Interior - we see a weary, resigned woman looking beyond the horizon, beyond any hope and time. However, it is she who becomes the heroine chosen by the artist and placed in the center of the painting. In no way does this image fit the idealized model of physical robustness often portrayed in the socialist realism art dominated by the energy of strength and health. Instead, the artist portrays a crippled person who struggles to survive the hardships of living in poverty in the demanding postwar conditions. Her hump is not just a physical defect, it is a symbol of social exclusion and the result of hard work beyond her strength. Each of the very few oil paintings by Wróblewski is a result of his thoughtful decision on what he chooses to record and express, what might have the capacity to convey in the most accurate and faithful way the artistic and social truth of the time in which he lived. Therefore, in the full-figured and elaborated image of the Hunchback the artist draws attention to the fate of people who have been marginalized, deprived of their tomorrow, of hope and social attention.
