Lives of the Artists: Maria Bartuszová
Gabriela Garlatyová, Tate Etc.
May 2017
Maria Bartuszová (1936–1996) came from Prague’s intellectual and artistic community. She studied in the ceramics and porcelain studios at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in the city from 1956 to 1961, where she acquired a deep knowledge of her craft and began her experimentation. However, perhaps because of unease over political events, she and her husband sculptor Juraj Bartusz, left Prague in 1963 and settled with their young family in Košice, the second-largest city in Slovakia.
Here, while attempting to discover the perfect sculptural form in her studio, she found inspiration when playing with her daughter. She realised that by pouring plaster into an inflatable ball she could produce a pure round shape. She named this technique of casting plaster inside rubber forms (balloons, condoms, etc), through the gravitational action on the liquid and solidifying material, ‘gravistimulated casting’. […]