Abstract
This essay is based on current research of the sculptures of Maria Bartuszová for the first monograph of this artist. It comprises an elaboration of the list of her work and her biographical and bibliographical data, along with the processing of her archives of drawings, notes and photographs.
It presents Bartuszová's work chronologically, while also touching on important topics and thoughts of the artist complemented by a selection of quotations from her diaries and notes. Maria Bartuszová worked in isolation and did not publicize any events from her private life.
However the story of her life is the key to understanding her artwork. Her creation is open to intuition, play, therapy, and meditation, which enabled her to be open while experimenting with innovative classical sculpture.
Her themes are intuitive, mental and spiritual concepts which overlap in communication in the course of creative time and thus create a living organism of her oeuvre. They include technological procedures of gravistimulated and pneumatic casting of plaster in elastic forms which are also conceptual constructs of her haptic and organic sculptures of the 60s and 70s.
In the 80s, she transformed full, cast forms into fragile ovoid sculptures, objects, reliefs created in technically demanding experiments with pneumatic casting of plaster in rubber balloon forms. Nature represented a significant part of her thinking; from the very beginning she strived to capture natural processes in firm shapes (rain, drops, wind, the germination of a seed, the growth of a plant and the ripening of fruit).
In the 80s, she connected nature through its objects and process qualities. In addition to casting plaster objects in the garden, which was an extension of her studio, she created in situ installations there.
The open studio was the first and frequently the last place for the installation of her works.