Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1900 Łódź, Poland

Died: 1975 Warsaw, Poland

Year of Migration to the UK: 1940

Other name/s: Janina Konarska-Słonimska

Biography

Graphic artist Janina Konarska (née Seideman) was born into an assimilated Jewish family, involved in the textile industry, in Łódź, Poland on 30 April 1900. She adopted the surname Konarska in 1918, a choice reflecting her family's conversion to Catholicism and their desire for greater integration into Polish society. Konarska trained as a teacher of drawing at the State Pedagogical Courses in Warsaw. Further artistic education followed at the School of Decorative Arts, where she studied from 1919–21. She then enrolled at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts under Karol Tichy and the acclaimed printmaker Władysław Skoczylas, whose influence significantly shaped her artistic identity. In 1925, while still a student, Konarska co-founded the ‘Ryt’ Association of Polish Graphic Artists with contemporaries including Tadeusz Cieślewski and Bogna Krasnodębska-Gardowska. She rapidly established herself as a promising talent through innovative use of the colour woodcut, known as ‘barworyt’, distinguished by delicate tones reminiscent of watercolours. Her cycle Święci Patroni (Patron Saints), featuring vividly coloured images such as Saint Erasmus and Saint Isidore, became highly sought-after examples of Polish interwar printmaking; one example from the series, St. Peter Chrysologus (c.1926), is held in the collection of the V&A in London.

Konarska was listed among the Polish women artists active in Paris whose work was featured in the General National Exhibition in Poznań in 1929. The following year, she was one of twenty artists who exhibited at the 1st Exhibition of Polish Women Artists in Bydgoszcz, where 120 works were shown. At the Bydgoszcz exhibition, Konarska’s modern woodcuts were particularly noted as innovative. Embracing cubist tendencies, she explored contemporary themes, including national identity and sports. Her celebrated woodcut, Narty (Ski), exhibited in Bydgoszcz, was later entered into the 1932 Olympic Art Competition in Los Angeles, where it won a silver medal. Her works were marked by geometric compositions, dynamic use of empty space, and formal synthesis, setting her apart in a largely conservative exhibition. Konarska’s growing reputation brought her international attention, and her work was exhibited widely across Europe and the Americas. Her personal life intersected significantly with Poland’s literary and artistic elite. In 1934, she married the prominent writer Antoni Słonimski, a key member of the influential Skamander literary group. Her marriage saw her artistic production diminish significantly as she increasingly dedicated herself to supporting Słonimski, whose public prominence overshadowed her own. Nevertheless, she continued exhibiting sporadically, notably winning the Grand Prix at an international graphic art exhibition in Paris in 1937.

The Second World War profoundly altered Konarska's life and career. With the outbreak of war in 1939, she and her husband fled initially to Paris, then, following the fall of France, relocated to Great Britain in 1940. Settling in London, Konarska became actively involved in the Polish artistic community in exile, contributing significantly to Britain's wartime art scene. She participated in exhibitions organised by the Society of Polish Artists in Great Britain, established during the war to support Polish artists displaced by conflict. Her wartime exhibitions included prominent group shows at venues such as the YMCA at Charing Cross Station in 1943, and the influential Allied Circle exhibition in London in January 1944 (Supruniuk 2023). These exhibitions were crucial for maintaining Polish cultural identity abroad, presenting artists who had been prominent in interwar Poland alongside rising talents. In Britain, Konarska also collaborated closely with other Polish émigré artists, including Józef Natanson, Marek Żuławski, Henryk Gotlib, and Feliks Topolski, consolidating the strong Polish contribution to the UK’s wartime cultural milieu. Her vibrant graphic works were showcased widely in Britain, notably receiving attention in London’s art press and critical appreciation for their innovative approaches to form and composition. During this period, Konarska also illustrated a 1941 English translation of stories by Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, praised as ‘jolly little drawings’ that captured the spirit of rural Poland (Bookseller 1941, p. 74). At the same time, she gradually distanced herself from the aesthetics of Ryt and Skoczylas. Turning to gouache, she began painting dark, emotionally charged scenes of ruined buildings, scorched homes, and deserted streets, abandoning colour woodcut for a sombre realism, reflective of wartime trauma (Strożek 2020).

After over a decade in Britain, Konarska and Słonimski returned to communist Poland in autumn 1951, amid Cold War tensions. Much of her pre-war output had been lost or destroyed, and she now focused on book illustration and occasional realist paintings reflecting the war’s aftermath. Her post-war life was largely private, centred on her husband, especially as he became active in dissident circles and subject to surveillance. She exhibited rarely after returning. Janina Konarska died in Warsaw, Poland on 9 June 1975. A major retrospective at the National Museum in Warsaw in 1977 reaffirmed her place among Poland’s leading interwar graphic artists. In the UK public domain, her work is represented in the V&A collection.

Related books

Mirosław Adam Supruniuk, ‘’Permanence and Liquidity.’ Polish Art in Great Britain in the 20th Century – Introduction to a Description’, Archives Emigration, Vol. 3, 2023, pp. 311–366
Karolina Rosiejka, ‘The 1st Exhibition of Polish Women Artists in Bydgoszcz’, Quart No. 4, 2022, pp. 112-131
Wystawa prac Janiny Konarskiej: 1900-1975, exhibition catalogue (Warszawa, Kraków: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sztuk Pięknych, 1975)
‘New Novels’, Time & Tide, 26 July 1941, p. 18
Bookseller, 17 July 1941, p. 74

Public collections

Victoria and Albert Museum

Related organisations

Ryt Association of Polish Graphic Artists (founding member)
School of Decorative Arts, Warsaw (student)
Warsaw School of Fine Arts (student)

Selected exhibitions

Allied Circle exhibition, London (1944)
YMCA, Charing Cross Station, London (1943)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Janina Konarska]