A Futurist of Form
Anke Kempkes, Tate Etc.
September 2022
In 2012, I travelled to Maria Bartuszová’s (1936–1996) studio in Košice, a remote south-eastern corner of Slovakia. The town was developed in Communist-era Czechoslovakia as one of the country’s key cultural and industrial centres. Young people from Prague were incentivised to resettle in this remote area, where new work and housing opportunities also attracted the young artists Maria Bartuszová and her husband, sculptor Juraj Bartusz. After finishing their studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, they moved to Košice in 1963, where Bartuszová was able to secure commissions for public designs and outdoor sculptures as part of the programme for cultural modernisation in the city. […]