Erna Rosenstein

Erna Rosenstein was a Polish painter and Holocaust survivor. She was born on May 17, 1913, in Lviv, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine). She was associated with the surrealist movement both as a visual artist and a writer. she studied at the Wiener Frauenakademie in Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. She was associated with the pre-war Kraków Group.

Rosenstein's parents were murdered after escaping Warsaw in 1942. Rosenstein survived World War II, hiding under various aliases.

After the war, Rosenstein co-founded the Second Kraków Group. In 1955 she was included in the exhibit Nine Artists  along with fellow artist Tadeusz Brzozowski, Maria Jarema, Tadeusz Kantor, Jadwiga Maziarska, Kazimierz Mikulski, Jerzy Nowosielski, Jerzy Skarżyński, and Jonasz Stern. In 1967 a retrospective of her work was held at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art.

Rosenstein's brother, the Austrian professor Paul N. Rosenstein-Rodan went on to become a Boston University professor and economist. He coined the term "underdeveloped countries". She was married to Polish-Jewish literary critic Artur Sandauer. Rosenstein died on November 10, 2004, in Warsaw, Poland.

Her work is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago In 2021 the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in New York held her first solo exhibition outside of Poland, entitled Once Upon a Time. In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.