OPENING: Discover a Tiny Void in the Infinite Universe by Marie Bartuszová
Although Maria Bartuszová was born in Prague, she spent most of her creative life in the seclusion of Košice, Slovakia, where she moved with her husband Juraj Bartusz (1933–2025), whom she had met while studying in Prague. She developed an original sculptural language based on the relationships between matter, emptiness, and touch. “The primary symbolic element for her was the vessel, an object creating a hollow form. The vessel-vase, with a shape resembling the female body, is an archetypal symbol of motherhood, fertility, creativity, life, and parenthood,” explains curator Gabriela Garlatyová.
Exhibition Opening
- Maria Bartuszová | A tiny void full of a tiny infinite universe
- Wednesday, May 6, 2026, at 6:30 p.m.
- Museum of Modern Art (47 Denisova Street)
- Admission: free
Visitors will see key themes in the artist’s work: from early biomorphic sculptures to experiments with so-called gravity-assisted or pneumatic casting, through which the material transforms into a thin, almost fragile shell. Bartuszová works with physical principles—pressure, gravity, and inflation. “Around 1981, she also began experimenting with hollow balloon forms. While the material was still setting, she inserted thin, egg-shaped shells into one another and layered them to create Infinite Eggs,” adds Gabriela Garlatyová.
Her work resonates today in a broader context as well—it is akin, for example, to the work of Louise Bourgeois or Eva Hesse. Yet it retains a unique perspective: a quiet, focused exploration of the relationships between humans, nature, and space.
The Marie Bartuszová exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Olomouc Museum of Art, the Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou, and the Marie Bartuszová Archive in Košice. “It is part of a series of exhibitions through which the Olomouc Museum of Art showcases artists with roots in Czechoslovakia, whose significance for the local art scene was often only confirmed by major international awards,” adds curator Gina Renotière.
The Olomouc Museum of Art has acquired three works by Marie Bartuszová for the collection of the Central European Forum in Olomouc, joining the ranks of many prominent institutions that hold her works (the Tate, Kontakt in Vienna, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and others).
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)