Mothers, wives and ... Tractor women - or about Polish women in socialist realism

The aim of the exhibition is to discuss the entrenched stereotype of women on tractors and question the veracity of the slogans of women’s emancipation preached by Stalinism. We will show the image of a woman who was forced by the authorities to make superhuman efforts and perform menial tasks, telling her equality and social advancement.

Among other things, the authorities directed the loudest propaganda slogans of the People’s Republic of Poland to women, such as the struggle for peace, labor competition, the fight for the Six-Year Plan, the fight against illiteracy and rural electrification. Thus, visiting the exhibition we meet not only different faces of women, but also learn about the realities of the era in which they lived and functioned. We will learn about the world of women’s fashion, the beauty canons of the time, women’s reality (e.g.: patiently standing in line in front of the store, busy at the machines or relaxed at the manicurist’s), as well as women during ordinary, routine housework.

The presentation of fine arts was enriched with animation – a game for young people and a screening of documentary films from the 1950s.

An interesting feature are “proletarian women on pedestals” – large-format prints of outdoor sculptures, or architectural details, depicting a woman in various social and professional roles. Some of these objects no longer exist.

Visitors to the exhibition will be able to see – which may come as a great surprise to many – the works of artists with a very high, lasting status in Polish art. “Romance” with the authorities and Socialist Realist art was not avoided by Wojciech Weiss, Antoni Kenar or Tadeusz Gronowski. The exhibition, of course, did not lack the declared creators of socialist realist art and its promoters: Helena and Juliusz Krajewski, Włodzimierz Zakrzewski, as well as works by Aleksander Kobzdej or Wojciech Fangor.

The authorities also “in the section of folk art” imposed an obligation on artists to popularize new ideas in the countryside. Thus, the subjects of numerous cut-outs, sculptures or paintings became work for the good of the homeland and the struggle for peace.

The objects in the exhibition have been arranged according to the themes and problems that most often appear: a gallery of women leaders, women on tractors and mules, women in the family and domestic environment, women working on the land, fighting for peace, as well as representatives of women’s organizations, sportswomen, artists.

In Socialist Realist art, many times the woman was overlooked or was only an addition to the male figure, and often resembled a man in appearance. The presented exhibition brings women out of the background, out of the background. It shows what opportunities for development stood before her and how these opportunities were limited.

About socialist realism

Polish audiences first became more familiar with the art of Socialist Realism on the occasion of the Exhibition of Soviet Art opened on March 4, 1933 at the Institute of Art Propaganda in Warsaw. However, it did not arouse much interest and few people anticipated its later expansion. Just after the end of World War II, no one had yet imposed anything on artists. After several years of relative artistic freedom, socialist realism was introduced into art. The leitmotifs for the artists of the time became: portraits of leaders, labor leaders (always with an attribute, the most popular of which was a tractor – a tool of progress), fragments of revolutionary struggles, the construction of a new system, worker-peasant friendship, etc.