Avant-garde midwives : women and the beginning of new art

The subject of the article is the place and role of women in avant-garde creativity. Women always were midwives of transformative and modernization processes, though their contribution was often omitted or passed over in silence; they were active and present, though not always visible and remembered. The text reminds of the figures of the women connected with the avant-garde movement of, inter alia, Cracow, Lvov, or Poznań in the 1920s, the translators of Italian and French futurists (Janina de Witt, Wanda Melcer, Anna Ludwika Czerny), the actresses reciting poems at avant-garde soirées (referred to as “vivid word” woman reciters: Julia Romowicz, Janina Przybylska, Zofia Ordyńska, Helena Buczyńska, Irena Solska, Anna Frenkiel, Stanisława Wysocka), woman reviewers, woman editors and woman journalists (Anna Limprechtówna, Maria Sławińska, Bronisława Rychter-Janowska, Jadwiga Migowa, Jadwiga Osbergerówna).