Mutual relations of mothers and daughters are rarely a topic of contemporary culture. There is a whole sphere of social expectations towards women that impose their ways of lives and their behaviour towards one another.
Frequently, although not always, being an artist means breaking out of the web of rules and standards. Maternity, as a traditional female role, seems to conflict with artistic activity. How to reconcile maternity with art? Do women who are really close support each other in being artists? Can an artist mother and an artist daughter live in harmony and fulfilment without feeling guilty? Did we manage to break the patriarchal pattern of mother-daughter relation that requires them to compete?
"Portrait of a Daughter – Portrait of a Mother", an exhibition of works by Anna Paszkiewicz and Ela Blanka, is a part of the discussion which accompanied, among others, the collective exhibition titled My Mother, My Daughter, that was presented at the Art Exhibitions Office in Krosno at the turn of 2021 and 2022. The idea for the Szczecin exhibition was based on Portrait of Mother, Ela Blanka's video created two years ago. Anna Paszkiewicz creates a portrait of her daughter, and Ela Blanka creates a video about her mother. It is not a jubilee card, but a dialogue between two close women, a mother and a daughter, artists working in the same field that close to matter: in sculpture. In the intimate space of the house and the garden atelier, we witness the creation of a portrait of the artist’s daughter, a sculpture created especially for this jubilee exhibition. We learn about memories and experience a kind of time travel: the video takes us to some old artistic realisations.
My mum Anna Paszkiewicz has always been someone unparalleled to me. It deals with her work, her concentration, her sacrifice, her internal and external shine; all this phenomenally and incredibly subordinate to modesty and humbleness. With the video, I intended to show my mum as a human, not only as an outstanding artist. I hope I managed to capture at least a hint of my Mum, of her everlasting charisma, talent and extraordinary, hearty distance to the world, as well as beauty that she brought to it with her work and with herself.
Ela Blanka
The memories of the 1970s and the 1980s are my youth and a time of a very intense life, including the area of art. I would like to highlight the word including, as I managed to live in various fields, not only in the field of sculpture. And I have committed a lot of mistakes in sculpture, particularly by not having recorded my achievements. This is how all my toil of designing Bogislaw X in 1969 is known only from several photos of 6 x 9 dimensions and so on. I have no record of a couple of my lost sculptures…
Anna Paszkiewicz
In an exhibition catalogue published by the Art Exhibitions Office in Szczecin, 1988, Lech Karwowski wrote: ‘(…) Apart from the cases of outdoor sculptures, that are rather solutions in the field of architectural space arrangement, Anna Paszkiewicz’s most personal world is dominated by small stone forms, often combined with metal, aluminium, bronze or brass. Stone blocks may give only a general idea of real shapes. They rather make general impressions of being organic by smoothness of curvatures and roundness of shapes (…)”.
The exhibition will present over 20 sculptures by Anna Paszkiewicz, including portraits of Lena, Ela Blanka and Mera. Among the selection of works, there are: Moby Dick, Symbiosis, Fruit of the Ocean, New Atlantis, Comet, The Bermuda Triangle, Survivor, Dream, Philosopher, Welcome Spring, Flight, Portrait of a Newcomer and others. The exhibits will contain archive photographs, drawings and two mock-up monuments: Bogislaw X and Anna Jagiellon, a plaster model made for a competition, and a model of a monument of the Home Army, awarded but unrealised, made in cooperation with Waldemar Wojciechowski. Apart from the video, Ela Blanka will present her two newest works: The Meaning of the Body and Natural Selection?
Anna Paszkiewicz is one of the most important artists of post-war Szczecin. She comes from the vicinity of Vilnius, Lithuania. She was born during the war, in 1940. After her arrival in Poland in 1955, she first lived in a forester’s house near Wolin, and then in Szczecin. She studied at the faculty of sculpture of the State College of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. In 1964 she obtained a diploma at the studio of Prof. Stanisław Horno-Popławski. She made numerous artistic journeys: Egypt (1976), Georgia (1978), East Germany (1975, 1986), Latvia (1988), West Germany (1988), Korea (1988). She authored outdoor realisations in Poland, Latvia, Germany and Italy. In years 1971–1986 she cooperated with Adolf Warski Shipyard in Szczecin, creating copper and ceramic sculptures. Her interests include monumental and small sculptures, figural ones and anthropomorphic abstraction, as well as installation and performance.
Her most important works in Poland are: a monumental, 14-metre-high granite obelisk created in 1968 to commemorate the first border post set in Czelin by the River Oder in 1945; Maternity I in park Żeromskiego in Szczecin and Maternity II at ul. Mickiewicza 68. In the same period she created Bogislaw X and Anna Jagiellon, a monument unveiled in 1974, a common project and the beginning of long-lasting cooperation with Lena Chmielnik. At a later time, the following were created: Crowning (Wings), located in Park Kasprowicza near the open-air theatre; Herons (1976, a lost sculpture) on lake Rusałka; Lamplighter – Prometheus (1978) in park Żeromskiego. Some of the most important foreign works are: Asylum (1988, a park sculpture, Riga), Golfer, (1991, made of sandstone, Obernkirchen in Germany), Idol (1992, city park in Martano, Italy), Connection (1996, a park sculpture in Behringen, Germany).
Ela Blanka graduated from the faculty of sculpture of Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk in 1999. She was born in Szczecin, where she lives and works. She deals in design and sculpture, paints in acrylic and mixed techniques, creates objects based on computer graphics and runs workshops. Since 2011 she has been organising sand sculpture festivals. She presented her works on exhibitions in Poland and abroad (Germany, Italy, the USA, Denmark, Sweden, Kuwait, the Netherlands and Spain). She spent several years in Mallorca, where she established Centro de Arte y Cultura Polaca seated in Palma. Currently, she is running a gallery called STAR (Stowarzyszenie Twórcze Artystów Rzeźbiarzy – Creative Association of Sulpture Artists), recently in a new formula, as STAR website where she may present her socially involved works.
Exhibition Curators: Joanna Łozowska, Ela Blanka
The exhibition is accompanied by workshops for children (held in Polish exclusively).