Rosemarie Koczy

Rosemarie's haunting images are the result of surviving through two concentration camps during WWII. She was born to Jewish parents Martha Wusthoff and Karl Koczy in 1939, and in 1942 the family was deported to a camp in Traunstein, Germany. At such a young age it is no wonder that the faces of these victims would go on to haunt her.

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.

Her images often depict twisted bodies surrounded by intense marks of noise and line. The particles of ink resonate her ability to seemingly channel the spirits of the dead, while also materializing her need to wrap the bodies in some sort of burial shroud. Before she began drawing and painting in 1970 she had studied tapestry weaving at Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. Rosemarie insisted that her work always be accompanied with the following statement.

I weave you a shroud.
Ich webe euch ein Leichentuch.
Je vous tisse un linceau.

In 1985, Jean Dubuffet selected her work to represent the inaugural exhibition of the Neuve Invention portion of the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. At the time of her death in 2007 she had completed over 12,000 ink drawings of holocaust victims. In response to the acknowledgment and inclusion of her work as outsider art, she stated

"I don’t pretend to be an artist. I work every day like a labourer on that collective memory. I am just someone who renders justice."

Sources:
Anthony Petullo Collection
New York Times