Woźna Zofia

Zofia Woźna - Personal data
Date of birth: 16th October 1897
Place of birth: Kraków
Date of death: 14th May 1984
Place of death: Warszawa
Occupation: sculptor, painter
Related towns: Lviv

Woźna Zofia (Bejla Breindel, Bala Leser) - (16.10.1897, Kraków - 14.05.1984, Warsaw) - sculptor and painter, one of the first students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.

She was born on 16 October 1897 in Podgórze (now a district of Kraków) as Bejla Breindel Leser, daughter of Markus and Sarah, née Strücker (Striker). The Leser family came from Tarnów and was very traditional; one of Markus' nephews became a rabbi and Markus himself became a merchant and stonemason. After the Second World War, Bejla inherited one of the oldest tenement houses (year of construction 1827), at 34 Św. Sebastiana Street in Kraków[1.1]].

When submitting her questionnaire for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts on 28 April 1920, she provided her address as 14 Św. Gertrudy Street. At the same time, it was probably the first time she used the name Bala in an official document, signing it as "Bala Leserówna". Arguably, the decision to use the name "Bala" was no accident. The word means "power" in Sanskrit; Pañcabalā is the Buddhist Five Strengths. To a young soulful girl, "Bala" probably seemed more appropriate for an artist than Bejla. In her 1925 entry card, she already provided a different address, at 34 Sebastiana Street, with the notation "at the parents". There were quite a few Jewish families living in the area, for example, the esteemed Yiddish poet Mordechai Gebirtig with his wife and three daughters were living at 5 Berka Joselewicza Street.

Leser received a home education. Later, between 1919 and 1923, she attended a painting school under Wojciech Weiss, where she was awarded for her competition entries on two occasions. She studied with Józef Pankiewicz from 1923 to 1925 and with Friedrich Pautsch for two semesters between 1925 and 1926. For the following year she enrolled with Feliks Szczęsny Kowarski, but did not attend classes.


In a photograph from the academic year 1924/1925 presenting the Paris Committee[1.2]] Bala is shown in a ¾ pose with her hair pulled back and parted in the middle, wearing a white blouse with a navy collar. Among Pankiewicz's studio colleagues, she is the one who attracts the eye. She looks like a schoolgirl, even though she is over twenty-six years old. The distinctive pose - a slightly hunched back, leg over leg and crossed hands which she casually rests against her legs fits her introverted nature. She stood in the same way twenty years later when photographed by Benedict Jerzy Dorys (the photograph was later included in the catalogue of the 1964 Venice Art Biennale)[1.1.2]].

We have little information about her life in the 30s of the 20th century. Perhaps, like other artists from Pankiewicz's surrounding, she was discovering Paris? An application to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dated 19 November 1926 for a concessionary passport for students "to enable further painting studies abroad" has been preserved[1.3]. During this period, she produced a portrait of the sleeping sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, a photograph of which is preserved in the collection of Piotr Jaworski. This would confirm her stay in Paris.

In 1934, the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Kraków organised an exhibition by Wojciech Weiss and his students. Leser showed 2 oil paintings: Pejzaż and Martwa Natura, as well as three plaster sculptures, two nudes and one head. In 1936, she participated in the Artists' Salons in Kraków and Warsaw. According to Nicole Gdali, in 1937 she carved a portrait of the debuting poet Bronisław Kamiński[1.4]. In 1939, she donated four pen sketches to the F.O.N exhibition at the House of Artists in Kraków.

The day before the outbreak of the Second World War, Bejla Breindel Leser received her identity card. The confirmation document included the following characteristics: height - medium, face - oval, hair - greyish, eyes - hazel[1.5].

She fled Kraków to Lviv from the Germans together with the painter Jonasz Stern and his wife Teofila Kleinberger, who lived on the neighbouring street (at that time Dietlowska Street). They travelled the road to Lublin on foot.

In Lviv, local Polish artists, together with refugees from the German-occupied zone, founded the art cooperative "Chudożnik", headed by Stern. It included, for example, Maria Jarema, Henryk Wiciński, Erna Rosenstein, Adam Marczyński, Artur Nacht, Stanisław Borysowski, Czesław Rzepiński, Karol Ferster, and Bejla Leser. Most of those mentioned took part in the exhibition "Visual Art of Western Ukraine and the National Art of the Hutsuls" and a graphic exhibition. Both exhibitions were presented not only in Lviv, but also in other important cities of the Soviet Union - Kiev, Minsk, Moscow, and Kharkov.

She settled in Lviv with the painter Hanna Zuzanna Kipman, also a native of Kraków, at the home of Mrs. Krzysztofska, who was aware of the artists' Jewish ancestry. When the Germans occupied the city, Leser obtained documents from a deceased woman and changed her identity. From then on she became Zofia Woźna, born on 31 October 1911 in Besko. Her youthful appearance and slim figure enabled her to exist with a metric that said she was fourteen years younger. As she told Józef Sandel and his wife Ernestyna Podhorizer-Sandel,[1.6] she never wore an armband with the Star of David and did not move to the ghetto; she remained in Krzysztofska's quarters. Her companion (Kipman) became pregnant with the painter Jóźwicki. After the birth of her child, she moved with the infant to the outskirts of Warsaw; she did not survive the occupation.

Leser-Woźna took on various jobs, including making woollen gloves, working in a fruit office, and at the railway station. Her relatives remained in Kraków. Her father and brothers along with their families ended up in the ghetto, as did local neighbours, including the Gebirtig family. Her brother, Chaim Leser, who later emigrated to Haifa, was the only person from her immediate family that survived the Holocaust[1.7]. Representatives of culture and the arts there at the time met in "Pod Paletą" at 62 Krakowskie Przedmieście. Perhaps it was this place that was featured in Woźna's sketch W kawiarni[1.8] (deposit of Piotr Jaworski CRP Orońsko).

On 22 December 1944, the opening of the exhibition "Polonia (szkice z wojny 1939-1944)" took place, which opened in the halls of the Catholic University of Lublin at 14 Racławickie Avenue. Zofia Woźna was the exhibition's co-organiser, working in the Art Section of the ZPAP. She herself presented three works at the exhibition: Matka, Ostatnia Godzina, Matki Już Nie Ma- Szkic Nagrobka. In the catalogue, the artists were asked to identify the city with which they felt most connected. Surprisingly, Woźna stated Warsaw, although her fate was linked to Kraków and Lviv.

However, she found herself precisely in the capital as early as in January 1945. She settled in Bielany in Juliusz Górecki's house, designed by Romuald Miller (7 Szaflarska Street). On 10 April 1945, she registered with the Department of Culture and the Arts of the Municipal Board of the Capital City of Warsaw as the daughter of Mikołaj and Anna, born 31 October 1911, unmarried. She has stated her education and artistic path truthfully: the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, exhibitions in Kraków, Lviv, and Paris.

After the war, the artist consistently signed herself as "Zofia Woźna". The personalities of the woman, who died at the age of 30, saved her from death. Her decision was driven primarily by the desire to commemorate the person thanks to whom she survived. "Zofia Woźna still lives in me" - she told her neighbour[1.9].

She created the series Reminiscencje, referring in form to the classical canons of art. As in a Greek stage tragedy, the Holocaust put people in an impasse. Reminiscencje also includes a puzzling sketch in gouache and watercolour technique[1.10]. It presents a lying figure, depicted in accordance with the canon of the Image of the Cross, but it is a woman with exposed breasts and a swollen abdomen obscured by a perizoma, from whom a multiplied figure of a villain with a knife in one hand and a stuffed sack in the other is turning away. Perhaps it is an artistic rendering of the suffering of defenceless women, raped, killed, and robbed.

She has devoted many years of artistic work to the series entitled Pamięci Janusza Korczaka. The elongated silhouette of the Good Doctor on the plaster composition (from the collection of Piotr Jaworski) resembles a slender tree to which children who look like offshoots of the same trunk are huddled.

Woźna's sculptures related to the commemoration of victims featured figures of pregnant women, for example in the case of the monuments Oświęcim and Żydom Pomordowanym w Czasie II Wojny Światowej. Pregnancy probably has two meanings - a literal one and a figurative one, of which Rachel Auerbach wrote:

"And that is why I sometimes feel like a pregnant woman who troubles and throbs about the foetus growing in her womb. Like a woman who is pregnant, but not with the future life that is to be born to her, but with the past life that has perished, and whose reflection, whose luminous shadow it wishes to perpetuate still, even if only for a short time, in human consciousness"[1.11].

Pregnancy also appeared in Woźna's poetic work, but in a non-literal way:

"In the fever of creation/ in the oblivion of existence/

without hours and nights and days./

The days and nights of pregnancy/

mixed together/

without beginning/

without end//.//”[1.12].

These words correspond with the many busts of women for whom fate has not been as kind as to her. The image of the singer Lola Bertig, occupies a prominent place. The sculpture presenting the figure up to the waist depicts a grieving girl - looking into the distance, as if anticipating her fate. Lola became engaged during the occupation to Boas Leser, who, despite the exhausting work in the successive camps, managed to survive, unlike his fiancée. He eventually settled in Israel.

Also standing out among the busts is the intriguing face of an unknown model, which Woźna entitled Nefretete z Żoliborza. The sculpture caught the attention of critics and viewers at Zofia Woźna's individual exhibition held in 1964 at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. It also appeared in a frame of the film Dłuta Zofii Woźnej[1.13]].

Pregnancy also fascinated Woźna as a process of the rebirth of life. Motherhood and images of children have a prominent place in her work. There were boyish portrait busts of Wojtuś and Antek and, above all, affectionate images of little Piotruś[1.14], son of friend Janina Jaworska. She has also created several versions of Macierzyństwo. She dedicated one of the sculptures from this series, entitled Matka, also exhibited at the Zachęta in 1964, to Irena Kwiatkowska. There was a certain perversity in this, as the actress consciously opted out of starting a family, fearing that her professional work would suffer when fulfilling her duties as a mother.

Her work from this period is dominated by huddled girls, as if frozen in unfinished conversation, as well as solitary, spatial figures of women inscribed in a triangle. Emotions are clearly visible on the individualised faces. As the sculptor and poet wrote in one of her poems: "You will think that every person is a world"[1.15]].

Woźna's work during the post-war years also included an episode that confirmed her great skill as a craftsman. She made a replica of a sculpture by the eminent Baroque artist Jan Jerzy Plersch - a monumental statue of St. Paul for the facade of the rebuilt Church of the Holy Cross at Krakowskie Przedmieście. The parallel figure of St. Peter was carved by Adam Roman.

On 11 July 1946, she was awarded a prize in a competition for religious sculpture organised by the Ministry of Culture and the Arts. The sculpture was purchased for the Ministry's collection. The joy of receiving the award was dampened by the events of Kielce. A funeral for the victims of the pogrom had taken place three days earlier. We do not know whether Woźna participated in it, but Juliusz Górecki, a housemate from Szaflarska Street, took part, as a representative of the League for the Fight against Racism, and on the day the competition was decided, he submitted a letter to Cardinal Hlond requesting that church circles condemn the pogrom[1.16].

At the beginning of 1958 the artist co-organised a programme of events commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. During that time, she created various concepts to honour Janusz Korczak, including two mutually supporting figures, captured through the lens of Julia Pirotte.

The sculptures of the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly the Morze series, with the sculptures Dal and Samotność, corresponded with her poetic work. A particularly poignant piece consists in Samotność, made of three syenite columns from the ruined Kronenberg Palace (at today's Piłsudskiego Square). Through her sculptures, Woźna saved the memory of the palace, which was eventually demolished, making room for the later "Victoria" hotel. At the beginning of the 1960s, she experimented with material. Apart from the aforementioned columns, she used fieldstone to create the composition Oświęcim III.

She was active in organisational activities, perhaps looking for an antidote to her loneliness. She joined the Association of Artists AIAP at UNESCO in Paris, founded in 1956, and became a member of the ZAiKS Authors' Association in Warsaw. She participated in the Exhibition of Polish Art organised in 1960 on the occasion of the AICA Congress at the National Museum in Warsaw. The following year, she participated in the exhibition "Polskie dzieło plastyczne w XV-lecie PRL", where she was awarded First Prize by the Minister of Culture and the Arts. In 1961, she presented her work during the International Sculpture Exhibition at the August Rodin Museum in Paris.

During her autumn years, she met a sincere friend. Józef Bielawski from Kraków, a medical doctor and musician and graduate of the Kraków Conservatory, who propounded views on reborn entities. "He was convinced that there was a continuous evolution going on in nature, in the world, which would lead to man becoming immortal. He believed that a person's life does not end at death, but continues uninterruptedly in another form"[1.17]. This approach was what Zofia Woźna's aching heart needed, as her loved ones perished in the Holocaust. The artist has written a poem about life in "omni-creation":

"After all, I know/

and I know for sure/

that there is no death;/

that one life/

flows in all creation/

- the only life"[1.18] .

Bielawski died in 1962. The Koncerty series she was working on at that time probably became a kind of tribute to her friend. The Skrzypaczka sculpture from this series has been presented during many exhibitions and even inspired artistic projects (poruszenie by Katarzyna Surmacz from the Animation Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków). Skrzypaczka is permanently exhibited in the Gallery of Contemporary Sculpture at Kraków's National Museum. After Bielawski's death, Woźna and Stanisława Awłas sorted out his archive and donated it to the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1980.

In 1963, she had an individual exhibition at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw, where she presented 68 sculptures and 48 works in gouache, pastel, and oil. The introduction to the catalogue Wystawa rzeźby i malarstwa Zofii Woźnej was written by Andrzej Jakimowicz, and the graphic design and poster were created by Barbara Zbrożyna. The Office of Art Exhibitions in Sopot also organised an individual presentation of her sculptures between June-July 1963 and January-February 1964.

In 1964, she represented Poland at the XXXII Venice Biennale. Her 15 sculptures were juxtaposed with prints and drawings by Tadeusz Kulisiewicz. 1964 proved to be an extremely successful year for her. She was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and obtained a magnificent studio space. She lived in an avant-garde, for the time, eleven-storey high-rise building at 3 Sady Żoliborskie, whose architecture was inspired by le Corbusier's Marseille block. Woźna was given a glazed studio on the ground floor, belonging to a two-storey space with a garden. The studio included a two-room flat, which she gave up, stating that a studio including a kitchen without a window on the third floor would suffice. Adjacent two-storey spaces have been given to Barbara Zbrożyna and Andrzej Kasten.

She decorated the studio very ascetically. It was dominated by a large ladder, which she climbed efficiently despite her years. On an oilcloth-covered table, she prepared the material, which she also lent to a high school student - Piotr Jaworski - for making geological cross-sections. The boy often asked the artist questions about the war and always received one answer - "I don't remember anything anymore". She also didn't recall the pre-war times in a nostalgic manner. Sometimes, as she chatted with a friendly neighbour in a tiny bedsit decorated in the style of the Ład, she would say that it was not easy for a young girl from a traditional Jewish middle-class home to stay true to her decision of becoming a sculptor. The hermetic milieu of Polish artists in Kraków, dominated by men, did not welcome her with open arms either[1.19].

In the following years, Woźna's sculptures were exhibited during national exhibitions and were often awarded prizes. She also participated in international exhibitions - in 1967 in the International Exhibition of Women's Art in Athens, in 1968 in Nancy in the Third International Salon of Women Artists, Painters and Sculptors of Eastern Europe. Her works were acquired by museums and private collectors from New York and Geneva. She also created sculptures for the graves of her friends doctor Bielawski and actress Joanna Jedlewska, located at the Military Cemetery in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery. In 1977, she donated one of her works to the Haematology Clinic in Kraków, headed by Julian Aleksandrowicz, the "Hard Doctor", author of occupation memoirs[1.20], in the introduction to which he presented philosophical theories very close to those of Bielawski and Woźna.

The sculptor's heart was bothering her more and more often, she developed problems walking and no longer took on new challenges. In a letter dated 9 March 1978, Maria Kownacka wrote to a friend: "I have now thought of ordering from Zofia Woźna (an excellent sculptor, a resident of Żoliborz) a tiny, child-sized statue of Plastuś writing a diary (perhaps he is sitting on a pencil case?...) and giving it to the children of "Dzieci Żoliborskie", let it stand somewhere on the square where the children play. Low - base 1.50 m, Plastuś figure approx. 30 cm. Unfortunately, Mrs. Zofia Woźna, younger than me [in fact a year older - author's note] but already barely walking - and unable to undertake it herself, puts forward some younger colleague - a sculptor"[1.21]].

The archives of the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum in Israel preserve photographs of Zofia Woźna taken just before her death in 1984. They show a cheerful old lady hosting representatives of the organisation in her flat and studio. They are accompanied by Jewish-themed sculptures depicting Janusz Korczak and Lea Gebirtig.

 

Ewa Małkowska-Bieniek

References

  • Archive of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, ref. A4. Student passport matters. Student applications for concessionary passports 1926, 1928.
  • Archive of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, ref. T19B. Pedigrees of students from 1907-1924.
  • Archive of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, ref. KS 12-15, 17, 18. Certificate Books 1920-1927.
  • Archive of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Student enrolment cards from 1925-1927.
  • Dutkiewicz J.E., Jeleniewska-Ślesińska J., Ślesiński W. (ed), Materiały do dziejów Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Krakowie 1895-1939, Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich, 1969
  • Grubba – Thiede D., Zofia Woźna. Pradźwięki w horyzontach ciszy, Orońsko 2023

The biography was created as part of the project "Polskie Żydówki dla Niepodległej" (Polish Jewish Women for the Independent), implemented with a grant from the Totalizator Sportowy Foundation.

 

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Footnotes
  • [1.1] Reconstruction of a sculpture by a forgotten sculptor from Św. Sebastiana Street [online] https://budzet.krakow.pl/projekty2019/1787-rekonstrukcja_rzezby_zapomnianej_rzezbiarki_ze_sw_sebastiana.html [accessed on: 19.06.2024
  • [1.2] The photograph is in the collection of the BN, sig. F.105342/1 [online] https://polona.pl/item-view/fdb5e076-8e4a-4f7d-8e07-7793f14d24cf?page=0 [accessed on; 19.06.2024
  • [1.1.2] The photograph is in the collection of the BN, sig. F.105342/1 [online] https://polona.pl/item-view/fdb5e076-8e4a-4f7d-8e07-7793f14d24cf?page=0 [accessed on; 19.06.2024
  • [1.3]  Archive of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, ref. A4. Student passport matters. Student applications for concessionary passports 1926, 1928
  • [1.4] Bodzińska-Bobkowska J., Casus Twórcy Polski Rimbaud albo poeta zaginiony [in] Prace Literaturoznwcze VIII, UWM 2020, p. 146. Kamiński left Kraków in 1945 (perhaps the Kraków pogrom of 11 August 1945 had an impact on this decision?). He cut himself off from his Polish past and adopted the name Bruno Durocher, and wrote in French. He is best known as the founder of the publishing house Caractères.
  • [1.5] Grubba - Thiede D., Zofia Woźna. Pradźwięki w horyzontach ciszy, Orońsko 2023 p. 120, pic. 108.
  • [1.6] Ibid p. 151, pic. 156, 157
  • [1.7] Chaim Leser [online] [[refr:|Ibid p. 122
  • [1.8] CRP Orońsko (deposit of Piotr Jaworski) after Grubba – Thiede D.,  Zofia Woźna. Pradźwięki w horyzontach ciszy, Orońsko 2023 p. 119, pic. 107
  • [1.9] Interview between Ewa Małkowska-Bieniek and Małgorzata Księżopolska dated 23.05.2024
  • [1.10] Grubba-Thiede D., Zofia Woźna. Pradźwięki w horyzontach ciszy, Orońsko 2023 p. 62, pic. 54 (deposit of Piotr Jaworski)
  • [1.11] Auerbach R., Z ludem pospołu. O losie pisarzy i artystów żydowskich w getcie warszawskim, Nasze Słowo, 1948 No. 14-15, p. 15
  • [1.12] Grubba–Thiede D., Zofia Woźna. Pradźwięki w horyzontach ciszy, Orońsko 2023, p.38
  • [1.13] [accessed on: 19.06.2024
  • [1.14] Ibid p.60
  • [1.15] Secrets and Lies - Upcoming Event [Online] https://www.studioexpurgamento.com/index.php/exhibitions/8-exhibitions/19-felicia-glowacka#gallery0f380cbf94-14 [accessed on: 18.06.2024
  • [1.16] Letter of the League for the Fight against Racism to Rev. Cardinal Hlond, Gazeta Kujawska Y. 1946 No. 157 p.2 [online] [[refr:|Grubba-Thiede D., Zofia Woźna. Pradźwięki w horyzontach ciszy, Orońsko 2023, p. 116, pic. 105
  • [1.17] Grubba – Thiede D., Zofia Woźna. Pradźwięki w horyzontach ciszy, Orońsko 2023 p. 57
  • [1.18] Ibid p. 141
  • [1.19] Interview with Piotr Jaworski and Małgorzata Księżopolska 23.05.2024
  • [1.20] Aleksandrowicz Julian Kartki z dziennika doktora Twardego, Wydawnictwo Literackie 1962
  • [1.21] Faron B., "Jak rodziła się przyjaźń?" in Almanach Łącki No. 6/2007, p. 22 https://www.lacko.pl/edc_media/Structure/Item-0078/TinyFiles/Almanach-lacki-9.pdf [accessed on: 18.06.2024
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