Belvedere Vienna mounts major survey of Polish artist Erna Rosenstein

The Belvedere in Vienna presents "Erna Rosenstein: On the Other Side of Silence," a major survey of the Polish painter, poet, and assemblage artist (1913–2004). Curated by Stephanie Auer, the exhibition spans Rosenstein's career, focusing on her lifelong exploration of grief, loss, and displacement following the murder of her parents during the Holocaust. Born in Lviv (then Poland, now Ukraine), Rosenstein studied in Vienna in the early 1930s and later joined left-wing avant-garde circles in Kraków. During Nazi occupation, she survived under false identities, fleeing across Poland; her early work was largely lost. Her art features recurring severed, floating heads of her parents, evolving from narrative contexts into surreal landscapes and isolated double portraits. The exhibition traces her fusion of Surrealism, biomorphic abstraction, and figuration. The 1951 painting "Screens" exemplifies this, with a blue rectangle in a nocturnal forest containing her parents' hands and faces. Rosenstein was featured at Documenta 14 (2017) and the Met's "Surrealism Beyond Borders" (2021–2022). The show runs from 3 July 2026 to 10 January 2027 at the Lower Belvedere.