Rosemarie Koczy

Rosemarie Inge Koczy (March 5, 1939 – December 12, 2007) was an internationally renowned artist, teacher, human rights advocate and Holocaust survivor.

Life

She was born in Recklinghausen, Germany, eldest daughter of Martha (Wusthoff) and Karl Koczy, both Jews. She was deported in 1942 and survived two concentration camps: first Traunstein (Dachau) and then Ottenhausen (Struthof). Fifty years after the war’s end she wrote of that time: “We worked in the fields every day. I saw the killings, the shavings, the bleachings, the torture and hunger, the cold, typhus, tuberculosis. Death was all around!” (In addition to her artwork and voluminous correspondence, Koczy compiled a memoir of over 1100 pages, archived at Yad Vashem, that is at once autobiography, meditation and lament.) Remaining at Ottenhausen, now a displacement camp following the liberation, for several years, she was raised afterwards by her maternal grandparents, her mother briefly and several foster families and orphanages, where she was again put to manual labor and talk of the camps was forbidden.

In 1959 she left Germany for Geneva, Switzerland toprepare to study art. Supporting herself with domestic work, Koczy was accepted into the [http://www.hesge.ch/ead/ Ecole des Arts Decoratifs] (Geneva, 1961) and received her diploma with distinction four years later. Concentrating upon tapestry, she soon gained recognition throughout Europe, mounting two successful solo tapestry museum shows in Geneva (1970 and 1979, the latter dedicated to Mahler’s Third Symphony) and producing over seventy major works in fifteen years. A chance encounter with Peggy Guggenheim in Venice in 1973 led to an abiding friendship (and the commissioning of a tapestry for her) and contact with then Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum director Thomas Messer. By the mid 1970s the unexpressed trauma of her early years forced a change of direction in her work toward a more and more open acknowledgment of the Holocaust. By the time Koczy accepted a fellowship to the MacDowell Colony in 1980 at Messer’s invitation, she had already begun to create the signature pen and ink drawings memorializing the victims of the Shoah reverenced today throughout the world. In addition to hundreds of paintings, wood sculptures and other works they alone numbered over 12,000 at the time of her death from cancer. In her later years Koczy insisted they only be shown accompanied by a statement in English, French and German which begins: “The drawings I make every day are titled ‘I Weave You A Shroud.’ They are burials I offer to those I saw die in the camps.”

A supremely disciplined tireless force of creativity at the service of an absolutely uncompromising spiritual focus and integrity, Koczy created a community art school outside of Geneva in the 1970s, and in Croton-on-Hudson, New York State, where she taught hundreds of students privately over the last twenty years of her life. Since 1995, at her expense, she instructed elderly and disabled residents of [http://www.retirementhomes.com/North_America/USA/New_York/Ossining/Retirement_Homes/Senior_Living/Maple_House.htm Maple House] in Ossining, supplying the best materials, arranging shows and acquisitions (many by her and her husband). The couple also hosted annual art/music gatherings in their home for many years, showcasing the work of other artists and poets and collecting funds for the [http://village.croton-on-hudson.ny.us/Public_Documents/CrotonHudsonNY_WebDocs/organizations Croton Caring Committee] .

Esteemed in both mainstream and outsider art worlds but in the moral dimension apart from both, Koczy’s work was widely sought and resides in many private and public collections, such as the Guggenheim (both in New York and Venice), the Milwaukee Art Museum, the [http://www.artbrut.ch/ Collection de l’Art Brut] in Lausanne (where she inaugurated Jean Dubuffet’s Neuve Invention Annex in 1985), [http://www.museumimlagerhaus.ch/ Museum im Lagerhaus in St. Gallen] , [http://sammlung-zander.de/ Museum Charlotte Zander] in Bonnigheim (Germany), [http://www.musee-creationfranche.com/ Musee de la Creation Franche in Begles] (France), [http://www.museumdrguislain.be/ Museum Dr. Guislain] in Ghent (Belgium) and Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem (which in 2007 accepted her largest sculpture, Deportation of the Children, into their permanent collection).

Of the unique urgency of her art, Goya scholar Fred Licht has written: “Koczy’s drawings have a moral aspect… One receives the impression that she feels it her duty to execute (them), and duty cannot exist without a sense of moral responsibility. (We must) follow her call to contemplate the darkness which she shares with us and which she, unlike us, neither tries to evade or deny.” At the same time, in Thomas Messer’s words, “Koczy’s art, in the last analysis, speaks to us through formal authority and through convincing resolution, leaving us thereby in a state of catharsis, uplifted and hopeful.” As one vindication among many, she was the first female recipient of the Francis Greenburger Award, chosen and presented by Mr. Messer himself at the Guggenheim in 1986.

Rosemarie Koczy’s first marriage (which brought her Swiss citizenship) ended in divorce. She married composer Louis Pelosi, whom she had met at the MacDowell Colony, in 1984. She became an American citizen in 1989.

References

* Wiseman, C., (2007) "The Place for the Arts: The MacDowell Colony, 1907 - 2007," MacDowell, New Hampshire. ISBN 1-58465-609-3

* Miller, Stephen, "Rosemarie Koczy, 68, Holocaust artist", "The New York Sun," December 19, 2007.

* "Five Artists Awarded Greenburger Prize", "The New York Times," Arts Section, May 1, 1986.

External links

* [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1986/06/09/1986_06_09_030_TNY_CARDS_000345722]

* [http://www.musee-creationfranche.com/anglais/publis_expos.html]