Maria Bartuszova
Maria Bartuszová was born in Prague (then Czechoslovak Republic, ČSR, now Czech Republic, CZ) in 1936. She spent most of her life in Košice (now Slovakia), close to the border with Hungary and Ukraine. She graduated from the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague. Bartuszová is considered one of the most outstanding representatives of contemporary art in Slovakia and became known above all for her innovative sculptural works. She left behind an impressive oeuvre of around 500 works, including modelled and cast sculptures of various sizes, wall installations, freestanding sculptures and a few monumental works commissioned for public spaces. Today, Maria Bartuszová is regarded as a key innovative figure in the history of Slovakian art, whose works have been increasingly recognised internationally in recent years.
In 1967, the artist was invited to the first Triennial of Slovakian Sculpture in Pieštany, SK. From the 1970s, Bartuszová was part of the international art scene and took part in numerous exhibitions, including 2009 Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, PL; 2009 Museum Moderner Kunst - Stiftung Ludwig Wien (mumok), AT; 2014 Sammlung Goetz, Munich, DE and major events such as documenta 12, Kassel, DE in 2007 and the 59th Venice Biennale, IT in 2022. In 2005, the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava, SK, dedicated a solo exhibition to Maria Bartuszová. In 2022, the Tate Modern, London, UK, organised a retrospective in collaboration with the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria, which was presented in Salzburg in 2023 as the first exhibition of the sculptor's work in German-speaking countries in an expanded form. Maria Bartuszová died in 1996 in Košice, Slovakia.
At the beginning of the 1960s, political censorship in Czechoslovakia was eased, creating a spirit of optimism in the art scene. During this time, Maria Bartuszová undertook a whole series of material experiments with plaster and clay. She developed unconventional methods and new manual techniques for finding forms, including a process for which she used balloons, plastic bags or condoms, for example, into which she poured liquid plaster and actively incorporated both the elasticity of the materials and gravity into her creative process. She called this artistic practice ‘gravistimulation’. The result was full plastic volumes, organic-looking round shapes, which Bartuszová often ‘constricted’ or ‘tied up’ with cords, creating the impression of bondage. Hard cords form an unyielding contrast to the originally soft plasticity of the material. They impose a physical pressure, forcing the plaster out on all sides of the cords and at the same time fixing the newly created form, which solidifies and solidifies under this pressure. The artist reflects the particular perspective of a woman who is socially bound by the constraints of society - in earlier times by wearing tight corsets - in contrast to her free nature. This group of works is characterised by a clear, biomorphic formal language, which can generally be interpreted as a metaphor for life and the growth of nature.
Since the 1980s, the artist has practically reversed this material technique by pouring plaster not into but over inflated balloons, thus creating negative casts and then letting the balloons burst. The implosion of the balloons sometimes resulted in extremely thin, splintered cavities, which evoke associations with fertility, placentas or abandoned eggshells, fragility and vulnerability in general. She called this artistic practice ‘pneumatic cast’. The Generali Foundation Collection holds one of the few surviving and characteristic works from the 1980s.
The independent artistic techniques that Maria Bartuszová found correspond to the artistic reorientation of the European avant-garde movements from the 1960s onwards, for which cross-genre and border-crossing experimentation with unconventional materials and techniques, and ultimately the artistic production process itself, became increasingly more important than the finished form.
Bartuszová's central theme is metamorphosis - the constant transformation of one shape, structure or form into another as an ongoing process of transformation, for which the artist has taken the human body and natural phenomena as her model, which are mutually dependent and subject to constant change. In her works, Bartuszová reflects personal experiences and spirituality against the background of her interest in Taoism and Zen Buddhism, as well as the cycles of life and the seasons. Bartuszová studied writings on psychoanalysis, social psychology and natural sciences and was interested in connections between scientific theories and ancient traditions. In her artistic practice, she explored the interplay of opposites: liquid and solid, soft and hard, organic and crystalline, positive and negative, and used external forces, air, gravity, water and pressure to find form, as well as light and shadow to enhance the spatial effect of her sculptures.
In 1964, Bartuszová joined the local artists' union. This enabled her to apply for public, state-funded commissions in order to create a source of income and livelihood. In the 1960s and 1970s, she was given the opportunity to create a number of monumental outdoor sculptures in public spaces, including monuments, playgrounds and several fountains for which she combined stone from the High Tatras (mountains in present-day Slovakia) with bronze. From the mid-1960s, Maria Bartuszová developed multi-part puzzle-like metal works that can be divided into individual segments and intuitively reassembled. In 1976 and 1983, the art historian Gabriel Kladek organised art therapy workshops for blind or visually impaired children with these special works by the artist and documented their tactile interactions photographically as examples of integrative and participatory experiences with works of art by Maria Bartuszová. (Doris Leutgeb)
