A Queue and Polish Mother. About two pieces of art by Zbylut Grzywacz.

In 1982 Zbylut Grzywacz, as a member of an artistic group ‘Wprost’, made a project of a drawing of Monument of a Polish Mother. The artist presented the Polish Mother as an elderly woman exhausted by committing trivial and everyday’s activities. At the same time Grzywacz was working on an oil painting – a triptych titled A queue. Seven stages of a woman’s life, which he ironically called The Monument of a Polish Mother, as well. The work shows six naked women silhouettes and a baby. Each of the women holds a carrier bag in her hands. The silhouettes look like they are moving and going forward from the left to the right side. The painting depicts a human getting old as the artist says that it has come into being because of ‘his own feeling of the passing time’. On one hand, the work as the title suggests: The Queue, as well as the fact of giving it an ironical name: The monument of a Polish Mother, presents a difficult situation of a woman, or to be more general, a human living in a totalitarian country what was present in the twentieth century history of Polish country. On the other hand, the second part of the painting’s title, namely, Seven stages of a woman’s life implies that the work may be connected with universal problems of people’s lives. The aim of my paper is to point out that the work deals with a topic which is far from historic dimension, what has been showed by the means of a visual metaphor. In contrary to the above mentioned project of the drawing we will not find any national symbols in it. Although, the painting’s title describes the queues which were common in the Communist Poland, the work gives a rather general answer, which is void of presenting a certain place or some particular events. Such an artistic trick may be treated as the example of painting presenting reality more significantly. The painter’s metaphor used here, depicts the secret of human existence