The work and activities of Maria Werten - painter, graphic artist, illustrator, educator, lover of folk art, toy designer and illustrator of children's books (published in Poland and America), promoter of Polish art in the United States - deserve to be better known. The dominant themes in Maria Werten's work were scenes from the world of children, religious themes related to the Christmas tradition, as well as images of children, portraits and stylised motifs taken from nature .

"Joyous Christmas" One of the many Christmas cards, designed by the artist, in the collection of the Polish Museum in America is a Christmas card in the art déco style . It ended up there with the legacy Maria Werten bequeathed to the institution.

The title composition, Joyous Christmas, depicts a traditional depiction of the scene of the birth of Christ, with Mary placed centrally, accompanied by symmetrically positioned angels. In front of her, in the foreground, the infant Jesus lies in a manger, illuminated by a nimbus; on the sides of the manger we see goat kids. At the bottom, the inscription "A JOYOUS CHRISTMAS" stretches across the entire width of the card, and underneath it in the lower right corner is the signature: "Marya Werten" (this was the form of the author's name she used when living in the United States).

But that is where the traditionalism of the shot ends. The postcard demonstrates the graphic capabilities of the author . In an unusually sumptuous and decorative form, in a narrow range of colours , limited to red, gold and cream-coloured paper, the painter has created a joyful vision of a Christmas scene, revealing her artistic tastes.

Inspirations for a Christmas card

We can look at Maria Werten's inspirations : the stable, marred by pillars at the edges of the composition, and geometric ornaments that recall the sharp lines of wooden country furniture and woodcarving . The upper part of the scene, with its geometrised silhouettes of birds, recalls patterns from woven kilims . The shot of Mary, with a simplified conical figure, covered with a mantle, wearing a large open crown on her head, surrounded by a huge nimbus, looks like the Madonna from the well-known image of Our Lady of Kodeńska in Polish culture.

Short biography of the artist

She was born in Warsaw on 22 September 1888 as Maria Wertenstein , in an intelligentsia assimilated Jewish family. Her brother was Ludwik Wertenstein (1887-1945) , Maria Skłodowska-Curie's assistant in Paris, an outstanding physicist and a pioneer of nuclear physics.

The painter's artistic path began at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts . She painted frescoes, watercolours, portraits, designed interior decorations, and cooperated as a designer with the Warsaw Toy Factory "Gnom". She took part in exhibitions of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts.

Maria Werten's interest in pedagogy and art education resulted in an important educational project. The American Elma Prat (1888-1977) , whom she met during her studies in Vienna and invited to Zakopane, founded The International School of Art ( ISA, which operated from 1928 to 1967 and had branches in Europe and the United States, and after 1945 also in Mexico). Maria Werten became the head of the Polish section of the ISA, based in Zakopane and Warsaw.

The aim of the school was to learn about the folk art of other countries and regions, and to achieve intercultural integration. In connection with this activity , the artist visited America six times in the 1930s (1933, 1935-1937, 1939). She tirelessly promoted knowledge of Polish art by giving lectures, publishing articles, running courses and organising exhibitions. The exhibition of Polish art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1933 , organised by Werten in cooperation with Irena Piotrowska (1904-1947?) , an art historian and critic, director of the Polish Art Service in New York, was a great success. The poster promoting the exhibition was designed by Edmund Bartłomiejczyk (1885-1950) , a master wood engraver and teacher of Maria Werten. The Polish Art Exhibition , presented in Madison , Wisconsin and forty other US cities between 1933 and 1934, received an audience of over three hundred thousand. Even the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright was impressed, inviting the artist to give a lecture at his Taliesin artists' colony estate in Spring Green.

Maria Werten and the Polish Pavilion

The Polish Pavilion at the New York World Exposition was ceremonially opened on 3 May 1939. Almost 11,000 exhibits showcased Polish culture and art, as well as the technological and industrial advancements of the Second Polish Republic. Paintings, banners, ceramics, costumes and folk art were shown, as well as models of aircraft and trains of Polish design.

The artist was the author of a catalogue for the Art Department of objects from the pavilion , created in the difficult situation of the liquidation of the escrow. She took an active part in efforts to secure the collection, which could not return to Poland due to the ongoing war. In her description of the works on display , she wrote about Polish folk art that it is among the "richest and most original in Europe". , and 'the Polish kilim has become so popular in Europe that its name is used as a descriptive term'.

Maria Werten's work in the collection of the Polish Museum in Chicgao

The outbreak of the Second World War kept Maria Werten in the USA, as did thousands of exhibits from the Polish Pavilion. A collection of the most valuable works by Polish artists from the World Exhibition was purchased in 1941 for the Chicago-based Polish Museum in America (MPA), which opened in 1937. The painter never returned to the country. In the 1940s, she taught and lectured at the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts) in Los Angeles, training, among others, the cartoonists of the Walt Disney studio.

The collection of Polish art amassed by Maria Werten during her years of residence and artistic activity in the USA was donated to the Polish Museum in America in 1945. In the postcards designed by Maria Werten from the Chicago collection, we find images taken from native folk customs , such as carol singers, various types of toys that were given to children for Christmas - possibly her own designs - as well as motifs from Far Eastern culture.

According to the researcher of the artist's work, Monika Nowak: "There were almost 1,600 objects [not all of which survive to this day at the MPA], including the largest surviving collection of Maria Werten's works (34,314)", graphic works, sculptures, Polish artists, designs by students of the Academy of Fine Arts, folk art products, toys, children's works. The artist's works include prints, including lithographs, in addition to illustrations, designs for decorative wrapping paper, Christmas and occasional cards, posters, wallpaper designs, and wooden toys from the 'Gnom' factory, probably made to the graphic artist's design. The collection also contains letters from Maria Werten, Irena Piotrowska and Mieczysław Haiman (1888-1949), the organiser and first curator of the Polish Museum in America.

Maria Werten died in 1949 and was buried in the Los Angeles Cemetery.