Maria Bartuszova — Transitional Forms
Maria Bartuszova (1936–1996) was a Slovakian sculptor known for her abstract white plaster sculptures.Her work is included in the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava and the Tate in London. A majority of her sculptures are made of plaster, a material that is preparatory and impermanent by nature. For this reason her sculptures are, by design, tentative, unfinished and transitory. On occasion, when “Bartuszová succumbed to the temptations of using aluminium or bronze, she would immediately undermine their material weight, through either form or subject matter: softening the material, putting it in motion, altering its proportions, and mocking gravity.” Her artworks in the second half of the 1960s were influenced by her individual vision of constructive geometric tendencies connected with new materials such as cut aluminium. In 1976 and 1983, together with art historian G. Kladek, she ran workshops for disabled and visually impaired children.
