Belvedere Survey of Erna Rosenstein's Postwar Art

The Belvedere in Vienna is presenting an overview of works by Polish artist Erna Rosenstein, focusing on her artistic output after World War II. Rosenstein, who studied at the Frauenakademie in Vienna in the early 1930s and was involved in a communist youth organization, experienced the February Uprising of 1934 firsthand. No works from this period survive, as they were lost or destroyed due to Nazi persecution in occupied Poland. After the war, Rosenstein developed an expressive visual language to address collective experiences of violence and questions of complicity. During the Stalinist era in Poland, she resisted the doctrine of socialist realism, maintaining a surrealist and subjectively informed artistic approach. For decades, her work thematized the violent death of her parents as a form of memory and processing. She remained committed to figurative expression even as her style evolved from the late 1950s onward. The exhibition, titled "Im Überblick: Erna Rosenstein. Jenseits der Stille," is held at the Belvedere and offers a comprehensive look at her postwar career.