Woman II

A series of graphics entitled Kobiety by Izabella Gustowska (born in 1948) was created in 1975-1979, shortly after her graduation (in 1972) from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań (currently the University of Fine Arts). According to Gustowska, during this period, she focused on experimentation, exploring her interest in printmaking, as well as body-art – a form of art in which the body is the main means of expression, which had been developing since the 1960s and  para-theatrical activities. In the early stages of her career, Gustowska focused on women – their sensitivity, sensuality and emotions became the leading themes of her works, and her art one of the pillars of the young, then developing, feminist art in Poland. The Kobiety series stands out from the artist's later, more poetic works thanks to the naturalism or even brutality of depiction. As in the case of many of her other works, in which she or women she knows play the roles of protagonists in her works of art, this series was also created in collaboration a person with whom she was close with. In her commentary, which focused on these works, Gustowska noted that she was intrigued by her acquaintance’s (Kinga P.) thick body, which brought to mind the Venus of Willendorf - a palaeolithic goddess of fertility. The new, contemporary version of the Venus of Willendorf, however, is not an object of worship in the artist's view, but an object of violence. A naked and immobilised model, with a terrorist balaclava pulled over her head, becomes a helpless, anonymous being, subjected to pressure. The way of exposing the female body, showing its real shape, which deviates from the contemporary ideal, indicates the relationship between the artist's vision and the feminist analysis of femininity, which since the 1970s has strongly resonated with disagreement on the culturally imposed, oppressive norms of the appearance of the female body.

Magdalena Lewoc