The aim of this article is to interpret Maria Anto’s painting in a new light and compare it with the art of women associated with the international Surrealist avant-garde. The Polish painter shared a similar sensibility with the Surrealists. Creating very personal, atmospheric works, they took up common themes and motifs in their works.

Vasyl Stus is the Ukrainian existential poet, who used aesthetic of surrealism and expressionism. This text presents surreal elements in the Vasyl Stus’s poems which are connected with the idea of hell. Author gives examples of different images of hell in European culture and literature and also analyzes the surrealist poems of Vasyl Stus from his book Merry Cemetery.