Early Polish Modern Art: Unity in Multiplicity
by Marek Bartelik

This groundbreaking work examines four avant-garde groups that emerged in Poland toward the end of World War I: the Formists, the Poznan Expressionists, the Young Yiddish group and the Futurists. It is the first extensive study to bring the four groups together, and in doing so it establishes interconnections between them, while 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 modernism on Polish art and the growing politicisation of Polish artists along nationalistic lines. 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 students, art professionals, and amateurs of moder art, who are curious to explore lesser-known aspects of the artistic development in the early twentieth century. It will also make fascinating reading for those interested in expressionism, futurism, Jewish culture and cultural politics in artistic modernism.

Winner of the Waclaw Lednicki Humanities Award 2007

"Based on original and expert scholarship, the analysis of the artworks is consistently authoritative."
DAVID CROWLEY, Royal College of Art

"Anyone interested in European modernism must read this book as it provides a key to the dynamic and multiple modernisms that developed in Central Europe just after the Great War. The reader will come away from this book with a new understanding of the impact of the political upon the visual."
ROSE-CAROL WASHTON LONG, City University of New York Graduate Center

MAREK BARTELIK teaches history of modern and contemporary art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York.

Publishing House: Manchester University Press, Manchester 2005
Hardcover book measuring 7" x 10"
225 pages, 50 b/w illustrations/photographs, index
Biographies of Polish artists, poets and writers
English Language Version

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