Polish Modernism and Jewish Identity

Approached through both a local and global lens, this book explores the work of Polish painter Henryk Streng and situates his practice in wider 20th century European contexts: Socialist Realism, Stalinism, Jewish identity, the Holocaust and new approaches to modern art.

Modernist painter, socialist realist, Holocaust survivor, and student of the Parisian Avant Garde, Jewish-Polish artist Henryk Streng was extraordinary for his aesthetic innovation during the two major traumas of 20th-century European history, the Holocaust and Stalinism. Yet his legacy in the development of European modernism is rarely acknowledged. In this book, inspired by the 2021 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Piotr Slodkowski demonstrates that the work of Streng disrupts established notions of 20th-century Polish art, connecting local Polish art history with wider 20th-century artistic movements and styles.

Traversing the 1920s Académie Moderne, hubs of creativity in interwar Poland, Nazi concentration camps, and the Polish People’s Republic under Soviet influence, this book reveals the changing artistic phenomena of Poland between the 1920s and 1950s, illustrating how Streng drew on his Jewish-Polish identity and the legacy of genocide in his work. Rather than deferring to the French Avant Garde, Slodkowski sheds light on regional expressions of modernism and emphasises the complexity of identity and creativity in 20th-century Poland. In doing so, this book brings Streng out of the shadows and into wider considerations of modernist European art and its development.