Józef Lewandowski
TERESA LEWANDOWSKA

"...badly framed and densely hung drawings give a blow on the head..."

She was born on May 2, 1928 in Warsaw. Her father, architect Michał Klette, was a son of an administrator of a Petersburg newspaper entitled Kraj, which before the Russian Revolution played a pivotal role in the Polish culture. Her mother, Joanna née Kossowska, was a daughter of a general and military physician in the Russian military service. The Revolution left Teresa's parents as castaways. They returned to Poland as young people with nowhere to live, no education, no profession. In the 1930s the father became a leading designer of reinforced constructions. He had been studying for 10 years with numerous breaks in order to earn a living as well as put by some money to continue the studies. It sometimes happened that he had neither work nor cash for his studies. Then he would undergo depression.
The father was born into a family supporting the Left. However he himself, like many others who had experienced the revolutionary hell, belonged to the National Democracy party and was an anti-Semite. In 1917 he was an officer of a corps under the command of General Dowbór-Muśnicki. The unit was created from the remains of the Russian army. It was known to have been annihilating Jewish communities as well as protesting peasants in Belarus and Ukraine.
I do not know whether the father participated in such acts. Some of the family spoke about the corps' activities with understanding, referring to them as "entertainment for young people". Mother did not share her husband's sympathies and antipathies. She was a teacher at a school for Jewish children in the village of Stawki (during the German occupation the place was called Umschlagsplatz). She claimed she preferred Jewish kids, who were more willing to learn and respectful towards their teachers. She also cooperated with Janusz Korczak. The family was not an agreeable one.
In Warsaw The Klette Family lived at Wielka Street, in a rather Jewish district. Teresa's friends were children from a tenant house. Her father was afraid of "Jewish omnipresence". On the other hand, her mother's grandfather was a baptized Jew, although the fact was kept secret. When Teresa was eight, the family moved to Mokotów, a Warsaw district. She did not have good relations with children from Dworkowa Street. Childhood without friends.
In August 1939 her father was drafted. The campaign was short. Michał Klette was captured by Soviet troops thus becoming a prisoner of war. His subordinate advised him saying: "Lieutenant, take off the stars and you will see that they will let privates go and keep only officers." But the father did not want to do that. One of the soldiers managed to escape from prison and passed the news about his commander. It was the last trace. Then there was nothing else. After Teresa's death I received a note from the Karta Center that Lieutenant Michał Klette was listed under the number 1312 on the Ukrainian List of Polish citizens murdered under the Soviet authorities' decree of March 5, 1940.
The then 14-year-old Teresa and her mother were staying at their relatives near Vilnius. The German-Soviet borders leading across Poland prevented them from returning to Warsaw. The formerly kind relatives decided to get rid of the paupers. Two years of vagrancy made Teresa mature and sensitive to poverty and humiliation. Both women returned to Warsaw in 1942. They had nowhere to live and nothing to eat. Finally, the architect Michał Kossowski and his wife, Aunt Tata (Tatiana), took care of them. By so doing they were able to pay back some old debt. Aunt Tata was Italian and she was Michaił Bakunin's granddaughter.
Teresa was already 14. She wanted to be active and to fight, as all young people belonged to some organizations and were involved in conspiracy. But Aunt Tata was an obstacle. She made Teresa promise that she would not engage in any secret activity and she would not even bring home any underground press.
Teresa had a number of complexes. She loved her father and was emotionally close to him, even closer than to her mother, but she could not accept his ideology. She felt guilty for her father's anti-Semitism especially when confronted with the Extermination. After many years this fact was one of the elements that laid foundations under our friendship and finally our marriage.
Her next complex was un unfulfilled duty - she was supposed to fight against Germans. She did not know that a forced obligation was not a result of indifference. Kossowska was afraid that childish recklessness and conspiracy just for conspiracy would end in misfortune. The Kossowski Family's flat also was a hideout for couriers from England. Aunt Tata also protected some Jewish family and her husband's friends. Being of the Neapolitan origin and a granddaughter of a great anarchist, she had conspiracy running in her veins. It was a very serious matter to her.
The Kossowski Family lived in their own house near Plac Teatralny (Theater Square). From a fifth-story window Teresa could see the bricked part of the city - the ghetto. Those inside died like flies, but hunger and diseases were not visible from the window; one could only imagine what was happening there. Earlier acts of extermination in the neighborhood passed unnoticed by Teresa. There were some Jews, some of them even her friends, but one day they disappeared. But the Ghetto Uprising in April 1943 did not escape her attention.
In Teresa's post-war accounts two elements constantly returned. First of them is a fire in the Synagogue at Tłumackiem Square and flying shreds of burning books, referred to as "kites" in Czesław Miłosz's poem Campo di Fiori. This event took place during the Ghetto Uprising. The second element is a carousel installed near the burning ghetto in Plac Krasińskich (Krasińskis' Square) and the feeling of being ashamed of the amused Polish crowd elbowing through in order to get a ride. The carousel was also described by Miłosz. The powerless fists clenched.
One more obtrusive memory from the times before the ghetto. Teresa walks to school, a business school. In an alcove of a house near Plac Bankowy (Bank Square) she notices an emaciated Jewish woman sitting. She stretches her arm like a beggar. People pass her indifferently. The following day Teresa takes a large slice of bread with lard. Being afraid that she might be noticed by a German or a szmalcownik , she pretends to drop the bread next to the woman's feet unintentionally. A few hours later, on her way back home, she sees that the slice is still where she left it and the Jewish woman is still sitting with her stretched arm, just as she did in the morning, just as she did yesterday. She was dead. The bread was thrown to a dead person. Just like in literature…
At the very beginning Teresa and her mother lived at the Kossowskis' place. But the latter suffered poverty as well. They had to find some source of earning money. Mother was a teacher in a school in Targówek quarter, but her earnings were not sufficient to afford even poor existence. Teresa came up with the idea of colorful flower-like brooches made of shreds. She made the first such brooch for Aunt Tata's birthday present. Later she tired to sell them. It worked. The brooch manufacturing became an occupation of a few people and quite a good source of making money. The brooches revealed Teresa's artistic sensitivity and determined her career.
August 1944 - the Warsaw Uprising, this time it is a Polish uprising. The neighborhood of Plac Teatralny (Theatre Square) became a battlefield. Later I will present descriptions related to the poet Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński who died here. Teresa has friendly relations with a medicine student, Miss Karłowicz. Her friend cannot walk, which is a result of a poliomyelitis. This however does not prevent her from being active in the uprising as a surgeon. Together with Teresa as an assistant, she operates and makes amputations. They use a kitchen knife, a pair of scissors, some bandages, but no anesthetic.
Now a few words about Miss Karłowicz. She had graduated from a school of medicine. Her contact with Teresa broke in the natural course of event. It was renewed before emigration in October 1969, when her parents invited us to their house to say goodbye. Miss Karłowicz had just been fired on the basis that she was a Jew and Zionist. She said to us: "I could have defended my position easily. But I did not do that. I accepted it as punishment for my sins." I did not understand anything, but did not ask. Later Teresa explained to me that during the occupation that girl, under someone's influence and against their PPS-supporting parents will, joined NSZ, a right-wing anti-Semite organization. Now she accepted the repressions against her, an alleged Jew, as compensation. However, such a stance was not a common one. It would have been too ideal to be true.
During the last stage of the uprising, a large-caliber shell hit an air-raid shelter. The blow threw Teresa away and her head broke a glass wall. Happy to be alive, she did not feel the pain, but in doctors' opinion the concussion she had sustained could have been the cause of later illnesses and premature death.
After the uprising Teresa and her mother were deported to Germany, near Frankfurt-on-Oder. They returned to Poland as soon as possible. But there was nothing waiting for them. Their house on Darniłowiczowskiej Street had burnt down, the Kossowski Family lost their lives on the way to a camp. All that the two women had was their clothes they were wearing while leaving Warsaw after the uprising. After many years she admitted it would have been wiser to get through to the West, but she still hoped that she would miraculously find her father. Finally, Teresa and her mother found a place to live in Cracow. The miracle did not happen - the father was not found.
Teresa continued making brooches; this is how she earned her living. But she managed to graduate from a high school of visual arts and the Academy of Fine Arts. She attended the courses irregularly, just as many post-war students. Her numerous absences were forgiven because her works were very good. She married her cousin Jan Wyszkowski. But it was a failed marriage, which quickly broke up.
There was little likelihood of finding a job in Cracow without connections. Running a private business became impossible after a few years. In 1954 Teresa moved to Warsaw. She put up at someone's place and for many years was making attempts to be registered as a citizen of the capital city and to get some place to live. She worked as a magazine graphic artist. In Warsaw she did not have "proper" connections either, but here at least it was easier to get a job. She was appreciated for doing the same amount of work as two or three persons at other newspaper publishers'.
We first met in 1960 during vacation in the mountainous village of Zawoja, Poland. A beautiful worldly woman, with a great sense of humor and ability to play bridge very well. When we began conversing in a less formal manner, Teresa started telling me about her problems. She dummied colorful weeklies in order to earn her living and support her mother, but she felt disgust towards the fruits of her work - the "too perfect to be true" propaganda. She had a strong sense of tragedy and was tormented by the desire to express her experiences. This is why she decided to study at the Academy, being convinced that she could make it, but somehow she could not get down to what seemed to be the task of her life, her vocation. She felt unfulfilled.
I encouraged her to take up the studies, otherwise results would never appear. It was a trivial thing to say, but apparently he needed someone who would not destroy her fragile inspiration with derision or indifference; the environment surrounding her had a paralyzing effect. An artist creates an illusion; in order to create it, the artist must be convinced that someone perceives his or her artistic work as an expression of their own experience.
We got married in 1962. Our marriage was not well tolerated by the family. Teresa started testing her artistic skills. Oil, pencil, feather. A market square in Kazimierz, loess ravines, architecture and flora, omnipresent delight with nature and human creation. And almost her every work, regardless of the object, bore some thorn of … I do not how to refer to it … some thorn of gloom, pessimism, or that breakdown.
I have no imagination for visual art and cannot express myself through a painting. However, I know many painters, recognize their way of seeing things and technique, I have learnt to perceive a painting in terms of a technique. But her style was a great surprise for me, it is still today. First of all, she was so much focused on her work that she did not notice people passing by, she did not hear them, and lost her sense of time. It sometimes happened that, when adding last touches to a painting, she spoilt it hopelessly.
The Russian historian Aron Gurewicz wrote about an extraordinary ability of medieval Germans - the ability to think through paintings. If I understand it correctly, he meant texts whose main thought was expressed in a picture-like manner. However, the other day on the basis of this observation, I came to a conclusion that some people could really express themselves mainly, if not exclusively, through painting. It was also true of Teresa. When faced with her work style, lifestyle, and perception, all formal issues, conventions, or experiences of others lose their significance. What is important is thought, feeling, experience, which an artist carries in himself and which he wants or sometimes even has to express.
Teresa did not think much what colors to use together, or what lines and surfaces will match appropriately. Of course, she had learnt about it and used such criteria when looking at someone else's works, but she did not remember about them while getting down to her own paintings. In spite of this negligence, the combination of colors was nearly always perfect and the surface integrally composed. It was rather me who tried to understand the composition of the canvas or the drawing. One specific characteristic of her early artistic activity was that all she did revealed some drama and concentration. Even when she tried to apply a "contemporary" style, the effects of her work did not manage to camouflage the emotional context and reference to reality.
She did not treat seriously the outcome of her work of the 1960s. She was surprised to hear critics saying that only few people could express a landscape or flora with such incredible sensitivity and simplicity. But these works were not what she considered her life goal. Now I know that her aim was to make it hard for people to do something which comes with easiness - to forget about sufferings of others.
It was year 1968. The editor of the newspaper for which she worked was Mr. Moczara. Teresa was told to make a poster condemning "Zionists". She refused. Consequently, she was fired. She managed to find a new job in other newspaper, but it was poorly paid and the articles were without her name in the copyright note. These were not the hardest experiences; others suffered even more, even among Teresa's friends, but the atmosphere of that year caused shock. She started creating works which later became part of the Abel - My Brother series.
Some workshop problems started to crop up. Everything one could learn at academies in Poland (and abroad) as well as works exhibited in galleries and showrooms were sometimes valuable and insightful, but far from what the artist had inside. Teresa appreciated all kinds of good art and did not miss any important exhibition. Her assessment was very objective and I was often surprised by her enthusiastic judgment of painters who preferred a completely different style than she did. She explained her judgment saying: "He does something I wouldn't be able to do." It does not change the fact that she found little inspiration or guidance in contemporary art. Contemporary trends taught sophisticated painting, but this style was far from 'literature'. If the trends demanded any commitment, it was only to the 'pure art', to the experience of color, composition, something which does not give meaning to form. Any non-artistic content was condemned. In Poland it was mainly a reaction to 'socialist realism', whose objective was to present a false picture of reality. But those trends which were a sort of reaction to the alleged realism also remained far from the most important human feelings. After 1955 painters in Poland could create beautiful paintings, but they had to be emotionally neutral. Such paintings were good for a living room, director's office, dentist's surgery, or bank. Actually, after some time the so-called 'institutions' took a liking to abstract art, just because of its political and emotional non-discrediting neutrality.
By means of such conventions there was no way to express the tragedy of Extermination and labor camps, the pain of the wounded, slave work, not to mention fear and humiliation, the feeling of lurking danger and cracking whip. Any attempts to express such emotions through conventional means ended up in a failure or even brought discredit on the author. I can remember that in the 1960s a friend artist was trying to express the ugliness of totalitarianism through abstraction. His message could not be interpreted correctly; it did not evoke an intended response in the audience or critics. It was loud about him as he became a precursor of some kind and his works were described as action painting - the art of ugliness. I will never forget his feeling of grief, because that was not what he had wanted to achieve. What was he supposed to do?
In the Jerusalem Yad Vashem and the Prague Old Synagogue I saw many drawings and pictures sketched in ghettos or in the Teresin camp. Their authors were recording the reality just as it was; they created evidence, trying to make up for the unavailable photography, but still not as good as technical means of documentation. And so mechanical revival of something that had been earlier noticed makes no sense either.
In this situation, what does make sense? Scream of the murdered, as it appears, cannot express the conventions of naturalism, impressionism, postimpressionism, or cubism in action painting or postmodernism (at that time not yet named). Such attempts result in sometimes worse, sometimes better, sometimes even perfect, but still conventional paintings, which are not proportional to the author's intensions or issues to be touched upon. Then where should one look for inspiration? She could not find much. That is why she marveled at the "Fajum Portrait", Rembrant, Goya, Daumier, and among Polish artists Linke. However, apart from these few names, others are worth mentioning too.
So she had to reject almost everything art experts had been teaching her; she even had to uproot all precious lessons so that the truths she had been smothering in herself could finally be revealed. That is why Teresa hated her job in the newspaper, where the product was "beautiful" and "trendy". The reality she wished to express was neither beautiful nor colorful. Her reality was dramatic, ruthless, and tragic. And it was not "trendy" at all.
In one sense her press experience was valuable: it counteracted narcissism. Because a journalist always asks himself how the text or picture will be perceived, whether it will be noticed in the ocean of printed matter.
Surrealism was the closest. Teresa aimed at expressing something which had happened in reality, but at the same time was unimaginably far beyond human's imagination. Hence, she admired metaphors and artistic shortcuts of the best Polish poster artists, so numerous those days. However, even the surrealistic convention of some imaginary experience did not tally with the events which were not at all a game of imagination, but the author's realistic experience - reality abridged to a symbol, not a conventional symbol, though, but the one that can be interpreted, understood, and capable of intensifying the audience's feelings. How can this be achieved? In the meantime, we had year 1968 and the "March".
Teresa and I were adhering to the "revisionist" tactics of loosening the system. We assumed that we could do something useful living in the system, disassembling it piece by piece, and that the flow of time fostered progress and democracy. In 1968 his philosophy suffered a defeat. Socialist realism was coming back to its origins - oppression as the basis of the system.
In 1968 the Polish People's Republic authorities showed an incredible (as for the socialist realism) generosity - they allowed the emigration of "Zionists". Teresa and I immediately decided to declare Jewish nationality and leave to Israel. We did not miss anything; we were fed up with the Polish People's Republic. We were given some papers stating that we were not the citizens of the Polish People's Republic. Some suffered metaphysical torments because of this. But Teresa was happy that she could free herself of the fetters.
On October 22, 1969 we were already in Stockholm. Without any money, apartment, acquaintances, not knowing the language. We were starting our lives from the very beginning. This was not the first time we did it, but this time it happened at the age when we should already be living a stable life. However, it is worth mentioning that Eastern Europe was far from normality.
In Sweden we were placed in a refugee camp in Lundsbrunn, in a distant province. Being given a small room with facilities, we enjoyed our freedom and the Swedish natural landscape. We made the acquaintances of a local newspaper journalist and local artists; there were a few of them living in Lundsbrunn. Mr. K.A. Jeleński was a middleman in a contract with Mr. Jerzy Giedroyć. I started writing to Kultura (Culture) on regular basis, and Teresa began painting. Gouaches, watercolors, drawings, transformed landscapes, but also some impressions of the two Warsaw Uprisings.
Lundsbrunn is a health resort managed by Svenska Missionförbundet, a splinter group of Lutheranism. The resort directors were John Malm and John Steiner. In their free time they often visited us, either in reference to administrative issues, always piling up, or in order to assist Teresa in her artistic work, or sometimes just to talk over a cup of coffee. They showed great sensitivity towards her artistic work; we had not expected that.
(Ten years later I met Malm's widow. After we had left Lundsbrunn, Malm started painting. He painted dozens of canvas comparable to the level of good postimpressionists. Teresa helped him discover his dormant talent. He had been painting till his last days. Painting brought him solace in his pre-death torments which lasted for long months. The subtle works revealed his polytheistic delight in the nature and the awareness of the fact that nothing lasts forever). Steiner offered an exhibition to Teresa. The vernissage held in 1970 in the "Spring House" of the health resort attracted forty refugees from Poland, local residents, some bohemians. After the paintings had been hanged, Steiner walked along the walls in order to see what idea the works presented. Having seen paintings devoted to the Extermination, he asked for a short delay. Then, without a word, he went backstage. The guests were waiting. Steiner returned with candelabras. He placed them in front of the paintings and lit the candles. The audience started crying. For many years they had been looking forward to such a gesture from Polish Catholic priests, but they did not receive it. Teresa started crying too. This was her first exhibition. She was in her early forties; others at her age already had a considerable artistic output.
The exhibition had a warm reception and a few thousands kronas was a great support. Local and national newspapers printed positive reviews. We decided that Teresa would devote herself to painting and my salaries would have to cover all our daily expenses.
I got a job in Stockholm. We moved to outer suburbs. Teresa started working intensively. She had three projects on her mind: first - to create a series about the fate of Jews, the Extermination, and the Warsaw Uprising; second - to express her experiences and feelings of the Nazi occupied Warsaw, including the Warsaw Uprising; third - to tell about the tragedy of her father as well as thousands of Poles murdered in the Soviet Union.
She started with the Extermination because she had survived the "March Campaign" or perhaps because she had been encouraged to do so by the cordial reception of the exhibition. And here comes the question constantly reappearing throughout the text: "Is it possible to express pain and tragedy, famine and death by means of a paintbrush and brush drawing, ink and monotype. One can note down some fact, but how to express one's experience in a way that it would move the viewers. According to the Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz, this was impossible. However, what is an artist supposed to do if he or she perceives reality in pictures. This task can be compared to the Buddhist koan, a problem with no logical solution. There is no recipe, one should continuously strive, make mistakes, fall down and pick oneself up, and finally the sum of all efforts will bring the expected results. Or it will not.
Another digression - our emigration, Teresa's and mine, was luxurious in many aspects. We were spared attributes of previous political emigration waves, that is, poverty, destructive struggle for survival, work that was completely unrelated to one's profession and aspirations. Our situation could not be called prosperity, but we had a roof over our head and modest financial conditions. But emigration meant breaking links with our friends and the environment we had been rooted in, loneliness in the new environment, no matter how warm-hearted it was. On the other hand, the emigration, unbearable loneliness, and being in a vacuum had inestimable values - they liberated from dependency on intellectual and artistic trends, from coterie, from what friends and acquaintances might say. Those who wanted had an opportunity to plunge into their own authentic experiences and feelings. The only condition was that they really had to desire it.
Teresa's technique was well-thought-out; she worked it out already in Warsaw. Paint flowing down a glass plate, reflected on a white surface gives an impression of destruction. Outlines and stains narrow, widen, and deepen; they are completed with brush drawing, paintbrush, and wash. They are becoming expressive and interpretable, in accordance with the definition of art as a transient impression caught at the right moment.
After Teresa's death I found some crossed out notes in which she recorded her experiences as well as warnings against esthetic temptations. They provide an insight into Teresa's process of creation and her self-discipline:
"Do not devote more than 15 minutes to one painting. Have breaks. Do not paint an object separately - color becomes different when encountered with light […]. An outline of an object with respect to drawing is illusory. Paint mass, but weigh color […]. Assume painting in cold colors as a basic set. Compose with color, later build with warm color […]. Every time you put some color, think how it matches the rest, see if it corresponds with the rest. If it does not, it should be changed […]. Do not finish a painting - this destroys and falsifies the work ("absolute man"). Making art interpretable and more beautiful destroys everything. You can continue painting a painting or finish it. Sometimes you are lucky to know when to stop. Later within next few weeks you can correct some details.
Painting is comparing, weighing, an impulse. You must surrender to an impulse, and sometimes even stimulate it. Then you can cross a barrier. Never consciously, because the experience gained becomes a routine only in 50 per cent. It is always out-of-date. […] One's artistic work is influenced by many impulses. The two most important ones are: 1) you create what you feel, 2) you create in a way you believe is appropriate. Try to revise and enrich the latter, […], practice your imagination in order to bring closer 'what you feel' and 'what it should look like'."
At the very beginning she created artistic works of small size, dominated by drawing. These were attempts to revive what she had seen and how she perceived this. It was penetration of her memory and subconsciousness. I have already mentioned that one day Teresa saw a Jewish woman sitting near the gate and dying of starvation, exhaustion, and difficult experiences. Apparently, she stayed in her mind as she became an inspiration. Three studies were created. Two of them became part of the portfolio Abel, min broder (no. 15 and 16 in the portfolio).
I admit that when I saw the drawings I was shocked, both by what the girl had experienced and the power of impression, not allowing the audience to remain indifferent. The artistic work approached the goal determined by the creator.
Shocked by her paintings was also the Swedish historian Bernhard Tarschys. He wrote about the art as liberation from experiences. Because her artistic work brought liberation and purification. In a sense, he was right. He did not realize, and nor did I, how much it cost to create this art, how much effort it requires to evoke feeling buried in an artist, how much it cost to get to the most painful layers of one's memory. Her generation, Jews, Poles, Russians, live and function mainly thanks to an instinct, which allows them to forget the worst moments. But Teresa had been deprived of such an instinct.
The pastors in Lundsbrunn were aware that being not young with professions which, frankly speaking, were useless, we were going to have problems finding jobs. We had great difficulties. Sweden, which had always been a leftist country, did not calm down after the 1968 riots and we told everyone about the meanness and rot of the Soviet system. Being naive, we believed it was our duty and the explanation of our refuge. We were building a wall between us and the lion's share of the intellectual and academic world. Better not to mention the artistic world.
We did not realize that we were acting against our interests. Frankly speaking, we could not act otherwise. But pastors knew better. That is why they were trying to help us and contact us with prominent guests of the resort. We did not make use of these acquaintances and we did not cherish them. The vision of becoming obtrusive inquirers, an attribute of refugees and artists, filled us with disgust. But there was one exception - a long dispute over the Soviets, the Polish People's Republic, the crisis of the communist ideology, and the decline of the Soviet system with the rector of Higher School of Theology in Lidingö, Olle Engström, transformed into a friendship. Later this friendship attracted the leaders of the Liberal Party, pastors Olle Dalén, Per-Olof Hanson, and Jan-Erik Wikström. We could always feel their discrete care when our problems were piling. And they did not want to convert us. But this friendship also had its dark side, as it contributed to building a wall between us and the cultural salon, for which the enlightened pastors to some extend represented reactionaries.
We accepted it as well.
After we had adapted to living in the outskirts of Stockholm, Engström proposed Teresa holding an exhibition at his university in December 1970. It was successful in many aspects, also because we could meet a few careful members of the audience. Only few of the presented works were displayed on further exhibitions. Teresa was still looking for subjects of her works, but the scope of her interests was establishing and the direction of the search was determined more precisely.
In 1973, Teresa's works were so advanced that we started thinking of presenting them to a wider public. The exhibition was organized by a few members of Amnesty. University professors Olof Kleberg and Terry Carlbom, the medical doctor Esbjörn Backström, and his wife Kai Nolg?rd identified themselves with Teresa's works of art. The exhibition Abel, min broder (Abel, My Brother) was held in Uppsala.
The exhibition coincided with the publication of a collection of selected works. With the technique available, printing was not easy at that time. The typographers Almqvist & Wiksell made attempts which cost more than they could gain from the offer. What I can remember from that period is their involvement. At the last stage, they carried out an experiment - they placed the originals and the print-outs next to each other and asked to tell one from another. The portfolio Abel, min broder consisted of 24 works displayed in Uppsala. The portfolio foreword was written by Bernhard Tarschys:

"The reality on the verge of life and death Teresa Lewandowska had to experience in
her early youth, remained as an unhealed oozing wound. [...] Sensitivity and great empathy enabling her to experience the agony of others did not calm down, the feeling of fear did not die out, even when the [Jewish] world had been extinguished and wiped out. The painful experiences resulted in great art, which at the same time provides evidence and liberation. The restrained but paralyzing pictures are an epitaph for the murdered as well as a warning for the living. And they are great art."

The Swedish press published similar reactions. On December 10, 1973, on the Human Rights Day, a Swedish television station broadcast a program devoted to Teresa and her artistic work.
We were surprised by a review by Józef Czapski in Kultura (April 1974), not only because of the expressed opinion. The review had some roots in Czapski's past. Two years earlier, in 1972, we had spent a month at Jerzy Giedroyć's house in Maisons-Laffitte. Teresa had a few paintings with her. She showed them to Zygmunt Hertz, who later made a contact between her and Czapski. His reaction was predictable - Czapski was an opponent of art engaging in anything beyond the matter of visual arts. Teresa could hardly recover after hearing Czapski's opinion. She understood that she was doomed to loneliness, outside schools, trends, and artistic circles. She underestimated Czapski as a human. When he saw her works again in the Kultura editorial office (at that time they were already compiled in her portfolio), he forgot his previous opinion and even that he had ever seen them before and bowed to what he saw. [The publisher of Czapski's works selection entitled Oko, for no apparent reasons, cut out this text, impoverishing Czapski as an artist and human].
Czapski writes as he was staring at shop displays with a sense of boredom while walking along rue de la Seine - the street of art galleries:
"Looking at those painting, I suddenly felt as if I were in an icy desert, although some of them were good." Abstract art realized itself and reached some end, in fact the dead end, with no way out. It touched Czapski, who apparently was going through a difficult time as an artist and art theoretician:
"What positive influence did the years of war and Russia have on my painting? None. When the experiences of that time were annoying me, I wrote Nieludzka Ziemia, but did not paint anything. [...] I opened that black-and-white album by Teresa Lewandowska almost accidentally while taking it form the Kultura library. Probably for the first time in my life I could experience such an unambiguous evidence and at the same time such an unaffected work of art. Everything, or nearly everything, touching upon the subject of the Jewish fate and the tragedy of the ghetto that I have seen in visual arts so far, gave me an impression of sacrilege. The attempts to express the message in art were far from the truth [...] The works of Teresa Lewandowska without stylization express the perils of life through application of modest artistic means of expression. Bloody Stains On The Snow, two human silhouettes hardly marked with a line on the snowy surface and a group of people with burning houses and smoke in the background. [...] An old man leading children for death and above their heads four faces in SS-man hats - Janusz Korczak: The Last Walk. Another scene expressed by means of a few shy lines and a game of a few artistic values. What can these powerless words express? The paintings make my lips sealed tight, there is no need of any formal assessment or discussion. Such powerful a message, achieved by such modest means of expression - the truthfulness of this art speaks for itself."
Any embarrassments? Certainly, there were some; for example when, in spite of a recognized name Tarschysa, Jewish communities remained silent. But there are also many other things I cannot understand.
Another exhibition. In 1973 we were in London. Jerzy Giedroyć contacted me with Adam and Lidia Ciołkosz, who introduced me to Wacław Zagórski, the editor of Tydzień Polski. Teresa showed them a few works from Abel and those related to the Warsaw Uprising. Wacław, one of the most prominent underground officers, and his wife Tamara Karren, a poet, were astonished. Soon after, Teresa was invited by General Pełczyński, the chief commander of the Home Army headquarters, to present her works on the 30th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising.
The vernissage Minuty Milczenia (Minutes of Silence) was held on August 1, 1974 in the Polish Socio-Cultural Center, then in the Princess Gardens. Teresa displayed over 60 new paintings as well as the portfolio Abel, My Brother. The foreword was written by Józef Czapski, and the exhibition was opened by the President of Poland, Edward Raczyński. In his opinion, "the artist had achieved a great thing". He stated that "the art created by Mrs. Lewandowska will be one piece of evidence left by our generation for the future generations." According to the guest book, the vernissage attracted 600 people, the elite of the Polish society in London.
Only Mr. and Mrs. Zagórski as well as Mr. and Mrs. Ciołkosz had been familiar with Teresa's works, so for Poles living in London the exhibition was a surprise (and I will use this noun a few more times). On August 3, in the Polish Center an elderly woman approached us. She introduced herself as Karolina Lanckorońska (info for the uninitiated: a historian and a historian of art, a legendary figure of the emigration). She decided to see the exhibition rather out of a sense of duty, as an old member of the Home Army. She thought that she would again see a sophisticated presentation achieved by the application of a conventional set of techniques, representing a low artistic and persuasive value. What she really saw was a great surprise. Our friendship with Countess Karolina Lanckorońska also withstood the test of time.
Unlike the artistic works of Abel, the paintings displayed at the London exhibition Minutes Of Silence were not published in a form of an album. That is why I would like to say a few words about the contest of the latter. Teresa always started with faces and events which became embedded in her memory. Pictures of people she knew and of those she did not, met on the streets of the occupied Warsaw, beautiful and ugly, young and old, courageous and resigned, always stigmatized by exhaustion. Gradually, Teresa began drilling the issue deeper and deeper, looking for a synthesis. And so she applied circles on water - a sign of obliterating memory. People transformed into trees. A city as a burnt forest, just as she had seen it after her return from a labor camp in Germany. The swastika as a hellish mill wheel, crushing people with its arms. The Vistula as a bloody river and its two banks as the symbol of partition into those "on the Left" and those "on the Right". Jumping across the street during a bomb raid, people huddled together like mill wheel fleas. Wounded, killed, exhausted.
Minutes Of Silence falls within the same time frames as Abel, My Brother; the subject of both exhibitions is a human being faced with violence, genocide, doom. But there are differences - also formal ones. Abel is dominated by black, reflecting the Jewish hopelessness during the occupation. On the other hand, Minutes Of Silence contains other color. Not any 'beautiful' color, but gray and gloomy. However, it is still some other color than black, suggesting that the Polish reality, although gloomy, does not give up its hope.
The astonishment Karolina Lanckorońska spoke about could be also felt in the reviews - there were many of them as for the small 'Polish' London. Alicja Drwęska wrote (in Tydzień Polski, August 17, 1974):
"I visited the exhibition three times […] the exhibition devoted to those who fought, died, and suffered in the Polish territories between 1939-1945. I wanted to recover from the first impression and examine these little pictures objectively, after cooling down a little, in order to assess their purely artistic values. But how can one separate the form from the content if this content is expressed by the form, so pure, powerful, and pithy. […] There are no theatrical gestures in these small but monumental pictures; even harsh colors appear only seldom - brown, gray, and black colors vanish in the white paper, while the thin modest line underlines only the almost schematic open form. […] Every single spot, every single line has its own sense, its own meaning."
The following are the words of Professor Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, a doyen of Polish artists in London, published in the same newspaper on August 10:
"This is a great event - a diversity of visual topics and abundance of unique means of expression - in spite of the uniform style. The tragedy, solemnity, and torment of the individual and the group, the softly spilled stain of the flowing theme and the contrast of the vibrating line … and at the same time the formal accent never splits from the expressive content of the theme. There is no point in describing every single […] creation - the language of visual arts aims at expressing what cannot be expressed through a spoken or written word."
During this exhibition Stanisław Frenkiel, an opponent of the "Polish illness in art", as he referred to sentimentalism, became convinced that "history is also art and poetry, because it requires a courageous conception and creative imagination". He wrote (Wiadomości, September 15):
"After October, when the Polish art accompanied by a music band and banners marched into abstraction, Lewandowska remained in the half-light of introversion and seclusion. Lewandowska's drawings are a mute but extremely expressive poetic commentary, more important than documents, because it is in itself an act of human imagination, inspired by sorrow and despair; imagination of a human who cannot forget. […] As a result, badly framed and densely hung drawings give a blow on the head, and I advise all those who had attended the vernissage to go and see the exhibition again without the din made by the crowd of the London elite. The dark tone of the drawings and the grotesque figures of the alive and those being killed, brandishing their arms numbly as puppets; people wandering among the scrapped-off and blood-splashed walls, anachronisms of civilization, reduced to the role of a saint scum, who has nothing left but a face with eyes gaping open. A world melting before one's very eyes just like jelly that is going bad, all this reminds of the times when the earth circled in the errant orbit, forgotten by God, and the soldiers draped in steel and leather, killing children with no remorse. Lewandowska's drawings are plain and the more eloquent they are, the deeper they penetrate and the greater feeling of anxiety they evoke."
There was also some unsigned review in the Jewish newspaper Folksztyme published in Warsaw. I talked to the author at the exhibition Minutes Of Silence. Unfortunately, the nice lady did not spark off the interest of the English press. The organizers had been trying hard; that is why Raczyński was asked to open the exhibition - he was the only person who could break the boycott against such events for emigrants. However, even he did not manage.
It is not the truth either that the visitors were buying the portfolio Abel, My Brother - indeed they marveled at it, but did not buy it. They were buying paintings penetrating the Polish tragedy and struggle. Teresa sold many of these. The Jewish shirt was much more distant than one's own body.
There was also some moving event: General Tadeusz Pełczyński, commander in chief at the Home Army Headquarters, invited us to the Underground Poland School, where he decorated Teresa with the Home Army Cross.
(Professor Gotthold Rhode, influenced by Czapski's review and knowing about Teresa's German origin, in 1974 came up with the initiative of organizing an exhibition in Germany. The foundation Stiftung des Deutschen Ostens from Düsseldorf contacted Teresa, but having learnt about the motif of the works, they broke off. What a pity - her works certainly addressed the German public).
And finally the third series of works. It was supposed to be devoted to Teresa's father, murdered in the abyss of the Soviet Union. Unlike the previous series, this series showed tragedy experienced through the "reflected light", through accounts and literature. Teresa read novels by Sołżenicyn, Achmatowa, Siniawskij, and by Polish writers such as Czapski, and Teresa's friend Gustaw Herling-Grudziński. She studied Polish texts published by Giedroyć. I did the sight translation of texts written in other languages.
Andrzej Siniawskij, who spent many years in the Soviet labor camps already during the period of Breżniew's rule. He visited us in September 1975. I invited him with his wife Maryna. He came round only for an hour, because he had only little free time between a lecture and a banquet organized by the PEN (International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, Editors and Novelists). He stayed until late at night and obviously did not go to the banquet. The organizers called him every hour, but Andriej brushed them off with some dirty language and asking me to tell them to go to hell. He associated himself with the paintings. The one that especially moved him was the one showing people with the faces of tired resigned dogs, looking through the bars of a railroad car. This is how he had felt when he was transported in a stock car to a labor camp in Mordovia . (The drinking night with Mr. and Mrs. Sieniawskij inflamed the antagonism towards the local writers and slavists, and Sieniawskij missed on some prize or scholarship). Leaving aside the chronological order, I would like to mention that another great Russian, Władimir Maksimow, met two years later, responded to Teresa's art in a similar way. A poetess and a great woman, Natalia Gorbaniewska, is invariably faithful to this art.
The series meant to commemorate the Polish officers murdered in the Katyń Forest and other places reached beyond the intended frames. This may have been the result of the novels read, but perhaps also of the belief that the Polish tragedy cannot be separated from the entirety of the Soviet crimes. Naturally, some of the paintings unambiguously referred to Katyń, for example the one presenting a decomposing corpse of a murdered officer. However, the painting inspired by Achmatowa - a hazy figure of a woman with hardly sketched fingers around her neck - did not refer exclusively to Polish experiences. It was also the case with the painting Waiting To Be Arrested: a face of a man aware of his fate, looking from behind a curtain drawn slightly aside. (Teresa used here the face of Jerzy Giedroyć looking through a window in Maisons-Laffitte, France. Only after the painting had been finished, did Teresa realize she had just painted Giedroyć).
The exhibition's title was to be The Land of Eternal Cold. In Sweden, however, the eternal cold is the matter of climate and does not evoke any political or ethical associations. Finally, the exhibition was entitled Rop ur Tystnaden (which literally translates as: scream amid omnipresent silence). It was displayed in 1977 in a church in the medieval Sigtuna, where Teresa had been invited by the rector of the parish, who later became Archbishop Gunnar Weman. Another display was organized in Immanuelkyrkan in Stockholm in 1980. There, the opening speech was delivered by the former president of Stockholm, Per-Olof Hanson. Critics' opinions were best expressed by the Uppsala Nya Tidning commentator, who stated that, taking into consideration Teresa's assumptions, the exhibition was bound to suffer a failure, and yet it achieved a great success. This illustrates to what degree Teresa's art did not fit the frames of the standard workshop.
Her art reached Poland in an unusual way. A few copies of her portfolio were sent to her friends and a few others to scientific libraries. Her cooperation with Giedroyć made Teresa non-existent in Poland. The only review by Stanisław Rodziński, a painter from Cracow and Academy professor, appeared in 1980, during the times of the Solidarity , when the Polish authorities had to deal with more serious problems than following the Lawandowski family. The review was very positive, although it also stressed the difficulty in determining Teresa's art, which fell beyond the generally accepted norms.

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Teresa Lewandowska went through art like a meteor. She had been bearing her intentions since the war, but she only managed to realize them after her emigration to Sweden. Underneath the appearances of go-getting energy there was an ill human being. She suffered from allergies, epidemics, and Quincke's oedema (Bannister's disease). An applied treatment brought only a slight relief, but it destroyed her organism. Working with paint and glue caused wounds. Rush at work was the consequence of being aware that time flies quickly and life is very fragile.
In late 1974, a dreadful tiredness showed its signs. The diagnosis was simple: depression. She had excellent doctors, who were fascinated with her works. Esbjörn Backström, Peter Norén, and Leon Weintraub did their best. Their successes were short-lived and the symptoms soon reappeared. Were her illnesses caused by the experiences of the war, and if so, to what degree? Or maybe it was tiredness? Probably, it was the combination of the above factors that was destroying the oversensitive organism. Yet in 1976 Teresa still found enough strength to finish The Land of Eternal Cold. Later she took the paintbrush only occasionally.
I do not feel strong enough to describe the long-lasting and slow dying. On September 22, 1983, while I was having a lecture until late evening, Teresa took a lethal dose of sleeping pills. As she explained in a letter she had left, she did not have enough strength to bear the suffering.
Shortly before her death, Teresa, who had never been a writer, wrote a few poems. It was a kind of last will and testament of a creator consciously walking away. She had no siblings or offspring; all the members of her family either had died or Teresa was not emotionally close to them. Her artistic work was all she had left behind. In accordance with her will, her body was cremated and the ashes buried in the Berth?ga cemetery in Uppsala. The valediction was delivered by University Rector Olle Engström and Associate Professor Terry Carlbom.
In Poland obituaries and a posthumous tribute written by Jerzy Tomaszewski were published.
The paintings by Teresa Lewandowska are exhibited in:
- Teologiska Högskolan, Lidingö, where "Teresa's room" was designed (21 paintings)
- Lundsbrunn Kurort (5 paintings)
- the Yad Vashem Institute Museum in Jerusalem (61 paintings).
A large portion of her works is in the hands of private collectors.