Rolanda Polonsky was born into an upper-middle-class family in Rovereto, Italy in 1923, and was educated in her home country and in France before immigrating to London, England. Soon afterward, Polonsky suffered a mental breakdown and was admitted to Netherne Hospital in Surrey, where she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Throughout her 35-year hospitalisation, she continued to create artworks.
Artist Rolanda Polonsky was born in 1923 in Rovereto, Italy into an upper-middle-class family that valued music, singing, and philosophy. Her father, Pietro Polonsky, was an opera singer, and her mother, the actress Isabella Teresina Nina Bailey Saunders, was the daughter of the English philosopher Thomas Bailey Saunders and Countess Elena Alberti Poja of Rovereto. In 1947, Polonsky earned a degree in political sciences from the University of Florence but decided to become a sculptor. She went to Paris for a commission and briefly studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
The reasons and timing of Polonsky’s arrival in the UK remain unclear. She may have first come when her sculptures were exhibited at the London Gallery in 1950 by the Belgian-born Surrealist E.L.T. Mesens, or she may have been visiting family. However, it is certain that by the time of the exhibition, she was living and working in London. Soon afterward, Polonsky suffered a mental breakdown and was admitted to Netherne Hospital in Surrey, where she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. While at the hospital, rumours circulated that she was an exiled Russian princess or had aristocratic connections, likely due to her non-Italian sounding surname. There, she formed a close, platonic bond with Martin Birch (1935–1982), a fellow schizophrenic patient whose drawings are held in the Wellcome Collection. Their friendship was rooted in intellectual exchange and a shared passion for art. They also often entertained community service volunteers at the hospital. Polonsky was present when Edward Adamson introduced his pioneering art therapy practice at Netherne and he also provided her with a studio space. For Polonsky, artistic expression became not only a means of creative engagement, but a crucial therapeutic intervention benefiting her well-being. Other hospitalised immigrant artists benefited from Adamson’s work, including Canadian-born William Kurelek. Despite her friendship with Birch and involvement in Adamson’s therapy, Polonsky often spent time in solitude.
During her long stay at the hospital, Polonsky created sculptures, paintings, and drawings. She frequently explored themes of Christianity, often reimagining traditionally masculine figures as female, alongside theme of femininity and the human existence. For example, one of her works includes a drawing of the Last Supper, featuring a cross, where the body on the cross is not Christ’s, but a woman’s. Polonsky justified this by asserting that women bear more crosses than men. A sculpture of a girl with a confused expression was described by Polonsky as resembling someone who had just lost her virginity. Her work also addressed suffering, redemption, and the weight of human existence, employing an emotionally charged visual language. Her works often depict figures in states of transcendence, with musicians, angels, and biblical subjects serving as vehicles for broader meditations on eternity, sorrow, and salvation. Through expressive line work and sculptural depth, she constructs a world where bodies bear the marks of the heaviness of human existence, and even joy is imbued with a fragile impermanence. A significant part of her oeuvre consists of large-scale religious sculptures, often placed in the hospital chapel. Among these is her Stations of the Cross, a relief characterised by a highly textured surface, with deep vertical grooves and an undulating, organic rhythm, suggestive of erosion or natural processes. Polonsky prioritises abstraction over figuration, reducing forms to repetitive linear patterns that create movement and tension within the composition.
Polonsky was released from hospital at her sister’s request after a doctor’s inquiry into why she had been kept there. Questions arose about whether she was genuinely ill or had been institutionalised by her family. In the early 1980s, possibly in 1982 or 1983, Polonsky immigrated to Paris, where her sister lived. She spent several years in France before returning to her hometown of Rovereto and resumed life in a care home, Casa di Soggiorno per Anziani, where she continued to create art. Rolana Polonsky died in Rovereto, Italy in December 1996. In 2017, her works were included in a group show Mr A Moves in Mysterious Ways: Selected Artists from the Adamson Collection at the Birkbeck School of Arts, London, based on one of the most extensive collections of artworks created by psychiatric patients. In 2024, the Civic Museum of Rovereto held a retrospective of her work, showing a selection of her later drawings, alongside the remarkably skilled neoclassical sculptures she created in her youth. In the UK puyblic domain, her works are held in the Adamson Collection Trust, part of the Wellcome Collection and the Bethlem Royal Hospital.