Rows of shrunken, faceless prisoners line up before oversized
guards with guns. Light-posts loom above the barbed wire fence like enormous
yellow eyes, and two swastika-marked chimneys pour smoke from a crematorium.
But there’s hope: Just outside, flowers bloom and pine trees blow in the
breeze. Spring is coming.
The horrific scene could be taken from Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, or
Bergen-Belsen; the artist Ceija Stojka had been imprisoned at all three of
these concentration camps by the time she was 12 years old. Although Stojka
survived the war, 90% of her fellow Austrian Romanis and Sintis (commonly, and
often derogatorily, known as gypsies) did not. This painting, Ohne Titel
(Untitled) (2003), is a rare, wrenching account of a Romani’s experience of the
Holocaust, told nearly 60 years later.
“Ceija Stojka. This Has Happened” at Madrid’s Museo Nacional Centro
de Arte Reina Sofía features 140 paintings and drawings, plus photographs,
videos, books, and other documentary materials by and about the artist.
Stojka’s first monographic exhibition in Spain appears as the country’s extreme
right-wing Vox party makes enormous political gains inside the country,
becoming the third most powerful group in parliament when Stojka’s exhibition
opened in November. But it’s not just Spain; nationalism and an intolerance of
the other is spreading across Europe and other parts of the world. And so Stojka’s poignant life story, artworks, and message are especially
urgent warnings in our times.
Romanis arrived in Europe in the 12th century
and quickly started to suffer discrimination. In the years leading up to World
War II, their status drastically declined as the global economic crisis made
jobs and social aid scarce, and eugenics became a widely accepted justification
for excluding certain groups from such social benefits. Stojka’s family lived
as nomadic horse traders before the war, and traveled the Austrian countryside
around Lake Neusiedl when she was a child. The idyllic setting eventually
inspired her art. But as tensions heightened, Stojka’s father converted their
caravan into a cabin on the outskirts of Vienna in an effort to blend in.
Austria’s far-right National Socialist Party accused Romanis of being a drain
on society and, in 1938, began deporting thousands of working-age Romanis to
labor camps throughout the country. Stojka’s father was sent to Dachau in one
of these raids and died in imprisonment the following year.
Stojka was only 10 years old when she was
arrested, imprisoned, and deported to Auschwitz. In the years when most
children are finishing elementary and starting middle school, Stojka was
subjected to unthinkable suffering and cruelty at the camps. In paintings she
made later to reflect on this period, Stojka rendered huge SS boots, floating
eyes, and ravenous dogs.Her paintings’ rainbow colors, schematic figures, and
restless gestures reflect Stojka’s profound preteen trauma. “She chooses to
paint and draw from a child’s perspective to flee the hell of the adult world,
of unlimited cruelty,” explained French art critic Philippe Cyroulnik. British
soldiers liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. It took Stojka and her mother
(who was with the artist throughout her time in the camps) four months to
return to Austria, crossing Germany and the Czech Republic on foot.
It’s estimated that between 200,000 and
500,000 Roma people—approximately a quarter of Europe’s Romani and Sinti
population—were killed during World War II. Countless others were imprisoned, tortured, and sterilized. Yet
relatively little is known about the Porajmos, or Romani Holocaust, and
documentation is scarce. Long after the war ended, it still wasn’t safe
to openly identify as a Romani or Sinti in Austria. Many survivors relocated to
big cities like Vienna, Graz, and Linz, and some even changed their names to
avoid further persecution. Stojka initially returned to nomadic horse trading,
but later settled in Vienna. She had three children, sold fabrics door to door
and then carpets at a market; she dyed her hair blonde and tried to resume her
life without drawing too much attention to herself.
Pre-war racial laws in Austria banned Romani
and Sinti children from attending school, meaning that many survivors,
including Stojka, could not read or write. She remained silent about her
traumatic experiences for years. But in 1986, Stojka met the filmmaker and
writer Karin Berger, who helped her publish Wir leben im Verborgenen.
Erinnerungen einer Rom-Zigeunerin (We Live in Seclusion. The Memories of a
Romani) (1988), the first of four memoirs, about her experience in the camps. Soon after, Stojka
began to create her autobiographical drawings and paintings.
At the time, Austria was facing a surge in
nationalist sentiment, and the artist was fearful that the past would repeat
itself. “I didn’t have anyone who would listen to me,” Stojka said in a 2008
interview, “and paper is patient.” Stojka’s work with paper—both as a writer
and artist—inspired the creation of the first Austrian Romani Association in
1989. By the time of her death in 2013, she had become one of Europe’s most
prominent figures for the Romani cause. Budapest’s European Roma Cultural
Foundation called her “a key figure for the history, art, and literature of
Romani culture in Europe.”
Ceija Stojka Arrest and Deportation, 1995. Courtesy of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
Stojka’s legacy lives on in the powerful histories and experiences
embedded in her work. In her painting Wo sind unsere Rom? Laarberg
1938 (Where are our gypsies? Laaerberg 1938) (1995), armed Nazis surround a
Romani settlement—mostly made up of women and children—on the outskirts of a
city. The apartment buildings in the distance suggest the many Austrians who
were complicit in or complacent about the Nazis’ persecution. In another
painting, Ohne Titel / Wein - Auschwitz (Untitled / Vienna - Auschwitz)
(undated), a swastika-emblazoned train barrels down a track that twists up into
a churning, blood-red sky. Stojka painted many of these painful arrest and
deportation scenes. Her fixation with the starting point of her group’s torment
reflects the mixture of personal and collective grievance in her work: She
spoke for those who could no longer speak.
Art historians and art critics have connected
Stojka’s style to the fitful, forceful German Expressionism. Others see traces of
Edvard Munch or James Ensor in her raw, haunting imagery. But Stojka was
entirely self-taught, and she worked in a style that was all her own. She used
her hands, fingers, toothpicks, and brushes to apply acrylic and gouache paint
to paper, cardboard, and, more infrequently, canvas. As a mark maker, Stojka
alternated between fine detail and brutal force: Light, feathery strokes formed
tree branches or footprints, while her rapid gashes became shadows and
swastikas. In some works, the artist lent a dreamy, gritty quality to her
recollections by mixing sand and glitter into the paint. But her most nightmarish visions are reserved to bleak black and white.
“I
reached for the pen because I had to open myself, to scream,” Stojka said in
2004. Many of her paintings and drawings are accompanied by poetic, handwritten
captions or inscriptions that transmit the anguish, hope, and ambivalence of
recalling these disquieting events.In Stojka’s SS (1995), naked women and
children burn in a hellish inferno of charred corpses, as a uniformed figure
with a massive black boot marked “SS” looks on. On the back of the painting,
the artist wrote the following: “It’s really hard for me to describe this.
Forgive me, Ceija. Truthfully.” More than 50 years after her ordeal, Stojka
struggled not to remember the horror she suffered in the Holocaust, but to
describe it.
Stojka is not the only artist of the Holocast.
Charlotte Salomon,
Felix Nussbaum, and Gela Seksztajn painted their experiences in hiding, at
camps, and in ghettos before they were killed. While these artists captured
their experiences as they occurred, Stojka joins David Olère, Boris Taslitzky,
and Léon Delarbre, artists who depicted the death camps that they managed to
survive. But unlike the others, who were formally trained, and often
professionally employed artists, Stojka was self-taught. She revived her
memories decades after her trauma, and arrived at her art on her own unique
terms. She offers a glimpse into the often-overlooked experiences of the
Romanis and Sintis, who were not officially recognized as Holocaust victims
until 1961 in Austria, 1982 in Germany, and 2016 in France.
Stojka’s paintings and drawings are harrowing, moving, and
beautiful testaments to human creativity in the wake of hate. Stojka once said,
“I’m afraid that Europe is forgetting its past and that Auschwitz is only
sleeping.” Today, as nationalistic politics surge across the world, Stojka’s
art and activism feel especially urgent.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artist-survived-three-concentration-camps-captured-trauma-art?utm_medium=email&utm_source=19202617-newsletter-editorial-daily-01-18-20&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=st-V
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