Membrane of Memory, 1980

Suspension between the particular practice of real life and a general meditation on human fate characterizes all of the artist’s compositions and portraits. This ambiguity is also present in her representations of objects, ordinary things, such as those we would use every day on a tablecloth. But when a real tablecloth becomes a background for still lifes they begin to mystify us by turning into paraphrases of objects. The artist instructs us about the tablecloth’s significance as companion to our brief, unceremonious meals, such as those one has when alone or while traveling.

Elzbieta Grabska was a leading Polish art historian and the author of several books. Her main fields of interest were art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries and Surrealism.