WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW? Sylwia Zientek and the biography of painter Mela Muter
About the event
Big Book Cafe Dąbrowskiego invites you to a meeting in the series WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW? — in which authors talk about their workshop and methods. We learn how books are born.
On March 17 at 7:00 PM Sylwia Zientek, the author of bestselling books about Polish women painters, will appear at Big Book Cafe Dąbrowskiego to reveal the making of the new biography of Mela Muter.
Mela Muter — an artist from a Jewish family, emigrated from Poland to Paris in 1901, where she co-created the most important artistic circles of her time. Her life is a story of Parisian Salons, of a friendship with Rilke, travels to Brittany and repainted canvases.
Sylwia Zientek will explain how, from the scarce traces of Muter's life and from a huge number of works, to build a credible picture of the artist. How and actually why she prepares a book about a figure she has already written about at length, including in Polki na Montparnassie.
What it looks like to assemble a biography from fragments and how many years one must work to arrange the account of lives that left few and scattered traces and testimonies whose reliability is hard to confirm. How the biographer deals with the 'white spots' in Muter's life — gaps, holes and mysteries that most likely will never be explained?
How do journalistic expeditions and visiting places directly connected with Muter help in creating an image of the heroine's life and work?
And finally, since Mela Muter left a huge output (it is estimated that she created around 2,000 works, which are now in various locations and some have been lost), why are there no extensive scholarly and museum studies of her work?
In addition to Sylwia Zientek's talk, we will also hear selected — and never before published — fragments of the book in progress, whose premiere is planned for this autumn from SIW Znak.
The evening will be hosted by Paulina Wilk.
In-person attendance — the meeting will not be streamed.
Admission free. Tell your friends!
Other books by Sylwia Zientek will be available on site:
- Polki na Montparnassie
- Blask Montparnessse'u
- Tylko one. Polska sztuka bez mężczyzn
Big Book Cafe Dąbrowskiego is a literary center created by the 'Kultura nie boli' Foundation. Every presence and every purchase supports the development of reading culture.
You can become our Patron — we invite support via donations on the Patronite service Patronite and we thank the people who, together with us, set literature in motion!
Big Book Cafe Dąbrowskiego is a beneficiary of the Book Institute's own program “Certificate for small bookstores.”
