Life and History
Marta Alexanderia Kremer was born in Krakow, Poland on the eleventh of February 1941 during the nazi occupation of World War II. By the time she was born, Poland had ceased to exist as a country and Krakow had become a German colony. Poland had become Hitler's staging ground for the Holocaust, which systematically destroyed Polish civilians of every age or class, whether Jew or gentile.
Marta was the last member of the historic Kremer family line to be born. For three centuries the Kremer family had contributed to the enrichment and preservation of Polish culture though philosophy, education, literature, philanthropy, architecture, medicine, business, and civil law. This heritage was threatened with destruction by the time its last member was born.
Josepf
Kremer (1806 - 1875)
During the war fear was a way of life. Survival could be
threatened at any time. A sun-drenched day at the park could turn
dark at the sound of sirens signaling everyone to run for cover in
their basements. Kremer's earliest memories where of being gathered
from her bed in the middle of the night and hurried into the cellar
where the tenants of the entire building would congregate and
remain until the bombardment ceased. They burned candles, ate
potatoes, and waited.
After the war Kremer was frequently sick and as a result absolved
from participating in Soviet parades and marches, which were
mandatory for every physically fit citizen. She suffered from a
series of life-threatening illnesses that weakened her heart. At
nine years old a bout of rheumatic fever nearly killed her. One
night, alone in the dark, Kremer’s heart began to beat so hard that
that the thick feather bed that covered her began to pulse up and
down. Kremer, being too weak to cry out, began to pray. She made a
deal with God: in exchange for letting her live she promised to do
something to honor His creation and goodness. She promised that she
would either become a nun or an artist, (but that she would try
being an artist first.) She survived the night and soon began to
draw.
As it turned out, drawing was the perfect activity for the
bed-ridden child: it took the most psychic energy and the least
amount of physical energy to enact. Her mother encouraged her
seeing that she had natural talent. Kremer began to draw profusely
- what she read about, and what she imagined. Insidentally, her
imagination was at times intensified by the hallucinations that
periodically accompanied her fevers. Thus, Kremer's technical
skills as well as her uncanny ability to engage her imagination had
their beginnings.
The post-war Soviet occupation was even more torturous to
the Polish psyche than the terrors of wartime. The communists
intended to wipe Poland’s history, culture, and religious tradition
from memory. Under the threat of death and imprisonment Poles could
not reclaim their identity for 50 years after WWII ended. In the
early 1990's Poland reemerged as a broken-boned nation from beneath
the weight of the Soviet fist. It was clear to the world however
that heart and soul of Poland had survived. The core of the nation
had survived for three reasons: her mothers, her faithful, and her
artists.
Kremer with her press in
1975
By the
time Kremer discovered printmaking while attending the Academy of
Fine Arts in Krakow during the 1960's, she had amassed a huge
amount of intricately rendered sketches. There were themes taken
from poetry and literature but all were of a highly personal
nature. The name of the print series she presented in defense of
her diploma was called "Feasts of Hunger". The theme was inspired
in part by the poem with the same title by the 19th century poet
Arthur Rimbaud. The shadowy figures in these etchings are slaves to
their passions. They eat like animals because of their insatiable
spiritual hunger. It is in this series that the fish, Kremer's most
prevalent symbol, appears for the first time. As well as the theme
of the artist's sense of being "a fish out of water," her personal
and social isolation.
Kremer
sketching dry fish at the Baltic Sea in 1965
Poland during communism was a country without the ability to
express its identity. It was a suffocating place to be an artist.
The Polish artist was as Kremer depicts her fish, dancing on its
tail fins gasping for air, facing destruction yet somehow defining
the odds. Because of the potentially grave consequences of being
singled out as a dissident, artists had to speak to each other and
to their audience in symbolic language. Kremer was not
intentionally subversive in her work however. She was simply
expressing a collective sense of leading a stifled existence in a
homeland that did not have the comforting qualities of home and
where again, as during the war, fear was a chronic state of being.
Any explicit complaint about this state of affairs, politically or
existentially, could result in being arrested as an enemy of the
state. Therefore, Polish citizens shared a drab reality where no
one smiled at each other in the street or spoke freely in public
for fear of being denounced.
Room with a view on the Sea 1967
By the time Kremer graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1966,
her post-graduate work was quickly recognized and acclaimed as
being among the best art produced in Poland at the time. The
prestigious Albertina in Vienna, Austria, which "accommodates one
of the largest and most precious graphic art collections in the
world" acquired one of her graphics in her first year out of the
Academy. Kremer's first works to be awarded were illustrations to
several of Franz Kafka's short stories. Soon-thereafter, these
etchings were included in the German publication Kafka in der Kunst
(Kafka in Art) by Wolfgang Rothe. By 1975, Kremer had received
numerous awards throughout Poland; had been included in eleven
permanent collections; and had participated in over 70 exhibitions
throughout Poland, Germany, Austria, Norway, France, Brazil,
Argentina, Switzerland, Belgium, England, Finland, Italy,
Venezuela, Cuba, Turkey, Iran, and Australia. On December 2nd 1975
Kremer arrived in New York City by invitation of the Kosciuszko
Foundation, an American center for Polish culture. After a year of
living in Greenwich Village and exhibiting in the city, Kremer
moved to West Virginia where she painted prolifically and heartily
enjoyed the beauty of nature, the simple kindness of other's and
the endless inspiration of motherhood. In 1985 Kremer became
naturalized as an American citizen. She was only able to return to
Poland after sixteen years when Communism fell in 1991. In 1998,
Kremer returned to Poland permanently. She currently lives and
works in Krakow.
Kremer after returning to Krakow
in 1999