In Maria Bartuszová’s body of more than five hundred works, we see the traces of a mysterious natural world. In the 1960s, after leaving her native Prague for Košice, the artist embarked on a delicate yet obsessive investigation that used humble materials to explore the generative power of natural phenomena. Hanging rubber balloons from a support and filling them with plaster, Bartuszová used the force of gravity to create round abstract forms that resemble nests, seeds, and eggs, or maternal and erotic parts of the human body. In the 1980s, unquestionably inspired by nature, she produced a series of generally ovoid sculptures that emulate the purity, and perishability, of organic shapes. Bartuszová created these thin, frail shells of whole or fragmented matter using a technique called “pneumatic shaping,” which involved coating balloons rather than filling them. Before the surface collapsed under the pressure of the solidifying plaster, the artist would mould the balloon, twisting, pressing, and layering it, and in the end, binding it with cords. These “living organisms,” as Bartuszová called them, inevitably resemble hatched or hatching eggs or cocoons, yet their roundness and the fact they are often tied and grouped together, suggests an inclusive human society.
Stefano Mudu
