Artist As a Member of an ART Group. the Oneiron Group's Journey through Communist Poland

The aim of this paper is to present the activities of the ONEIRON art group, which were conducted during the period when Poland was under the influence of the Soviet Union. At that time, the country was designated the Polish People's Republic (PRL). The group, which combined various fields of art, served as a significant point of reference for artists seeking a shared intellectual and artistic space for the creation of works and for the realization of the postulate for self-education. This was a period during which Poland was neither a sovereign country nor fully open to the world, particularly to countries outside the Eastern Bloc. In the context of restrictions and censorship, ONEIRON artists employed collaboration as a means of transcending barriers, providing a refuge for the realization of their creative and intellectual needs. However, working in a group is also associated with a number of tensions, which, from the perspective of sociological analysis, represents an intriguing case study in the interplay between individual and group identities, both in human and artistic terms. Moreover, when the group operates within a specific political or social context, these processes are also evident in the group's attitude towards the surrounding reality. This presentation will demonstrate how the relations between the artists in this group were shaped, what their worldview and artistic attitudes were, and what individual and group priorities emerged as a consequence. To facilitate a sociological analysis, in-depth interviews (IDI) were conducted with living members of the group and their families. In order to conceptualization the findings, reference was made to Charles H. Cooley's notion of the primary group (Cooley 1909), collective action in the art world (Becker 1974), and the role of habitus (Bourdieu 2001).