Early Polish Modern Art

This groundbreaking work examines four avant-garde groups that emerged in Poland towards the end of World War I; the Poznan Expressionists, the Young Yiddish, the Formists, and the Futurists. It is the first extensive study to bring the four groups together, and in doing so it establishes interconnections between them, and discusses their work in light of socio-political and cultural currents in Poland and wider Europe in the interwar period. The text focuses on the impact...
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This groundbreaking work examines four avant-garde groups that emerged in Poland towards the end of World War I; the Poznan Expressionists, the Young Yiddish, the Formists, and the Futurists. It is the first extensive study to bring the four groups together, and in doing so it establishes interconnections between them, and discusses their work in light of socio-political and cultural currents in Poland and wider Europe in the interwar period.

The text focuses on the impact of the Romantic tradition on Polish art and the growing politicisation along nationalistic lines of Polish artists in the early twentieth century. It examines the groups' art, activities, and published manifestos, while relating them to a panorama of artistic practices in Russia and the West. It also addresses issues of individualism versus group identity and nationalistic versus internationalist tendencies in modern art, grounding them in the context of 'regionalism'.

This will make compelling reading for those who are curious to explore lesser-known aspects of artistic developments in the early 20th-century. It will also make fascinating reading for those interested in expressionism, futurism, Jewish culture and cultural politics in artistic modernism.