For artists, art is often a reckoning with the past—there is no doubt about that. But is it possible for this reckoning to be directed towards the future? Absolutely. The common denominator of this endless timeline is the need to express traumatic experiences, both those that have been and those that are foreseen. "For several months, I've been painting these images. People full of holes... Embraced... Fleeing... It all happened on its own, and I didn’t understand it," confesses Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz. "I'm afraid of this intuition..." And the word became flesh—painterly flesh. Russia invaded Ukraine, and an inhumane war began. Was it intuition or a prophetic dream? Common sense suggests that prophetic dreams don't exist, yet many artists have had such dreams. "Europe After the Rain I," a work by Max Ernst from 1933, is a prophetic vision of World War II. Ernst's prophecy is striking; his painting is a fantastical map—a map of chaos, or a continent plunged into chaos. There are no roads, no rivers, no cities—Europe is entirely covered by a polychromed plaster relief. There are no people either, but if there were, they might look as Małgorzata painted them. "Fleeing, embraced, full of holes..." They would not be intruders; what connects them with Ernst’s painting is both the painterly matter and the unique portrayal of suffering—suffering hidden in metaphysical shapes, a particular kind of deformation. On Oleszkiewicz’s canvases, people suffer; on Ernst’s painting, the entire continent does. These are similar—intuitive—"figures of emotion." Is there a secret to prophetic paintings? If there is, it lies beyond them, for more important than the work itself is the purifying power of the creative process—catharsis. Perhaps the phenomenon of prophetic dreams does not exist, but premonitions do—bad premonitions that sometimes come true. Just like with Ernst and Oleszkiewicz, or—if you prefer—the Master and Margarita. 

 (jzm/2022) Jerzy Zbigniew Moryto - author of the book "Europe in the Times of Art and Madness."

1. Venice - Acrylic on canvas 50x60cm