![]() ![]() The ban on abstract art in totalitarianism increased its importance.”Īccording to the curator, Juliet Bingham, although Bartuszová managed to remain largely untroubled by the regime, pursuing her own ideas in public sculptures across three decades, her refusal to engage in propaganda or ideologically motivated art confined her to less prestigious commissions. Revolution in 1989, “Czechoslovakian artists lived in a country where everyĪrtistic work was to some extent a political statement.”Ĭertainly, Bartuszová herself felt the strain of these conditions, and noted inġ968: “Influences (on creative work): feelings of anxiety in totalitarianism, and the cold war tensions. But though she managed rather skilfully to sidestep the ideological demands of the regime, Bartuszová was undoubtedly under scrutiny from the authorities.Īs Marie Klimešová of Charles University, Prague points out in the exhibition catalogue, for the five decades up until the so-called Velvet With their characteristically organic forms, public projects such as the crematorium sculpture are a continuation of the ideas Bartuszová was working on in her private work on a smaller scale. ![]() Having joined the artists’ union in 1964, Bartuszová was licensed to work as a professional artist, and through various public projects, including the sculpture for the crematorium in Košice, and on the front of the Lipa department store, Bartuszová provided a steady stream of income for the household. The construction boom provided lots of opportunities for work, since by law all new buildings had to include a newly commissioned work of art. Then a rapidly developing industrial centre with plenty of cheap housing. In 1963, Bartuszová and her family moved to Košice, now in Slovakia and Indeed, though Czechoslovakia endured Soviet occupation from 1968 onwards, between 19 exhibitions of Moore, Pablo Picasso, Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp, Bridget Riley and the Gutai group all took place in Czechoslovakia. Interest in the dialogue between open and closed forms, empty internal space and surface, there are parallels with the work of Hepworth. ![]() The influence of artists including Henry Moore are evident in the abstract, yet recognisably natural forms of Bartuszová’s work, and in her increasing Increased opportunities for artists to show their work publicly and to see exhibitions of western artists. After the death of Stalin in 1953, curbs on personal freedoms and freedom of expression were lifted somewhat, with She married fellow sculptor Juraj Bartusz the same year, and gave birth to her first child, Anna.Īs part of the eastern bloc of countries under the yoke of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia was subject to a totalitarian regime from 1948, and access to the West was strictly limited. She went on to study ceramics at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where she completed her diploma in 1961. It charts Bartuszová’s career from the 1960s and 70s, following her changing techniques and vocabulary into the 80s, and exploring the entire breadth of her career from small, handheld works to large public commissions.īorn in Prague, in what was then Czechoslovakia, Bartuszová went to art school in the early 1950s before taking a job at a ceramic works. Showing alongside Cecilia Vicuña’s Turbine Hall installation at Tate Modern, and exhibitions dedicated to Magdalena Abakanowicz and Barbara Hepworth opening later in November, Maria Bartuszová at Tate Modern is one of a group of Tate exhibitions exploring the impact and legacy of female sculptors in the 20th century. In 2010, she was included in a survey of central and eastern European art at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and this year in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. She was little known internationally until 2007, when she was included in the German modern art exhibition Documenta. Bartuszová had only two solo exhibitions in her lifetime and though plaster was always her principal material, these focused on her works in bronze and aluminium.
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