P – N°45, Circa 1980

Sylvia Katuszewski  

Born on 18th October, 1946 in Paris, Cité des Fleurs, Sylvia Katuszewski lives and works in Paris.

Sylvia Katuszewski is a creator who has a mentoring network of poets (she especially corresponded with Rene Char). She created a horde of totemic icons, suffering women or bruised goddesses, damaged saints, poetic but deadly and in a lot of pain.

Wounded and wonderful women, standing, women-children, women-mothers, portrayed in milky whiteness, tender and sweet, sometimes scarred due to pain and this can be seen through their look, which trickles in black, scarified flesh, totemic touching women. A painful and beautiful effigy, tenderly created, however incomplete.

A paradox art and definitely a shock. Sylvia Katuszewski's fire retardant women-children are lifelike! Loved Icons, in a prayer repository and worshiped by men, nonetheless the sculptures of Sylvia Katuszewski embody the suffering of women, mothers children who are lost or abandoned, or have undergone aborted pregnancies. A differing art where the flexible treatment manages to suggest the harshness of words.

Katuszewski 's exhibition of works is an invitation of dialogue between oil pastels on paper and sculptures in glazed earthenware. The sculpture might look like an ellipse and restrained art, the drawing on the other hand explodes with bright, flamboyant colors and takes up the whole sheet. Therefore, the exhibition is created in two ways. Two sides of the same artist: exuberant and liberated on paper, but concentrated and forbidden with her sculptures.