CIAO

Born in 1933, Kraubath an der Mur, Austria. Died in 2013 in Vienna, Austria.

Ceija Stojka is an Austrian writer and painter of Roma origin, who survived the genocide during the Second World War.

She produced over a thousand paintings and drawings on paper, thin cardboard and canvas over a period of twenty years.

At the age of fifty-five, she felt the need and the necessity to talk about it; she embarked on a fantastic work of remembrance and, although considered illiterate, wrote several poignant books in a poetic and very personal style, which made her the first Roma woman survivor of the death camps to testify about her concentration camp experience, against oblivion and denial, and against the prevailing racism. 

There are two iconographic axes to his pictorial work:
The representation, without omitting detail, of the terrible years of war and captivity endured by her family and her people. 
At the same time, she paints colourful, idyllic landscapes, evocative of the pre-war years, when the Stojkafamily, along with other Roma, lived happily and freely in caravans in the Austrian countryside.

Her testimony does not stop with the texts she publishes (4 books in all between 1988 and 2005), which very quickly establish her as a militant, pro-Roma activist in Austrian society. From the 1990s onwards, she began to paint and draw, although she was also completely self-taught in this field. From then on, she devoted herself to it body and soul, until shortly before her death in 2013. Her paintings and drawings, produced over a period of around twenty years on paper, fine cardboard or canvas, number around a thousand. It has been shown in Germany, Austria and the United States, and in France at the Friche Belle de mai, Marseille and the Maison Rouge, Paris, in 2018 and more recently at the Reina Sofia, Madrid in 2019-2020.  These last two exhibitions received extensive press coverage: Le Monde, The New York Times, El Pais, The Guardian, Kunstforum international, Beaux-Arts Magazine, Artpress, Le Journal des Arts, etc. His works belong to several collections, including the Reina Sofia (Madrid, ES), Pinault collection (FR), Wien Museum (Vienna, AT)Erste Collection (Vienna, AT), Moderna Museet, (Stockholm, SE), Memorial Site CC (Ravensbrück,DE), MUCEM (Marseille, FR), Collection Antoine de Galbert (Paris, FR).