The Shadow Catcher

Erna Rosenstein was a surrealist painter, graphic artist, and poet. She was born in 1913 in Lviv, and died on 10th November 2004, in Warsaw. She was one of the key figures of the Polish avant-garde. Over decades, she developed her autonomous language to rewrite the post-war trauma and the Holocaust experience.

This book is a collection of almost all fairy tales found in the artist’s home archive. Most of them are probably from the 1940s and 1950s, but a few were written in the subsequent decades.

Child-like curiosity about the world, and questioning the logical order of reality were Erna’s signature traits in art and beyond. The world of animals was important to her; she treated it on an equal footing with the world of humans.

All the ignored, humiliated, and discarded were a source of constant fascination and one of the main themes of her works. Her workplace – a small room where she spent most of her time in the last years of her life was a magical, fairy-tale place.

The Shadow Catcher can be read and interpreted in many ways…

The Book of The Year 2022 by IBBY Polish section – winner (illustrations and graphic design)

The Illustrator Katarzyna Walentynowicz – finalist of The 57th Bologna Illustrators Exhibition 2023