November 21, 2009 through January 3, 2010

opening reception: November 21, 2009 6-8 pm
with comments by Lorely French, PhD
hors d’oeuvres by Bon Temps Gourmet
music by Queen City Hot Club “Gypsy Jazz”

Internationally known Austrian Romani artist and Holocaust survivor Ceija Stojka’s paintings depict her experience as a traveling Roma before and after World War II in Austria. These works speak to the trauma she and others suffered in the Nazi concentration camps, and the hope she has for future generations to overcome oppression. This is the third presentation of Live - Dance - Paint, which was exhibited at Pacific University in Oregon and Sonoma State University in California before concluding its tour of the United States at the West Branch Gallery & Sculpture Park in Stowe, Vermont.

An extensive catalog of Ceija Stojka’s works is also available through West Branch Gallery. Click here to request a catalog.

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This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of John M. Bissell Foundation of Stowe • Pacific University/Elise Elliott Trust • Sonoma State University/Daphne Smith Fund • The Austrian Cultural Forum, NYC • Stackpole & French Law Offices • Alliance for the Study of the Holocaust • Voice of the Roma/James Irvine Foundation • Union Bank • Bon Temps Gourmet American Society for Yad Vashem

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Ceija Stojka was born in 1933 as the fifth of six children born to a traveling Lovara Roma "Gypsy" group in Austria. She and her family experienced persecution during the Nazi times, including internment in the Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. She received little official school training, having been prohibited from attending school during the Nazi times. After the war she entered the second grade when she was already twelve years old. In 1988 the first of three autobiographical books on her experiences during and after the Nazi times appeared, called "Wir leben im Verborgenen: Erinnerungen einer Rom-Zigeunerin" [We Live in Seclusion: Memories of a Romni]. This was one of the first books to appear on Roma in the German-speaking world. In 1989 she began to paint. During the past ten years her works, which include oil and acrylic paintings on canvas, watercolors, and pen-and-ink drawings, have been exhibited in Austria, Germany, England, and Japan. Today she lives in Vienna and continues to paint, write, educate, sing, exhibit her art, and give public readings and performances in schools and at Roma festivals.

After all the artwork was packed up and carried away from her apartment in Vienna to be shipped to the United States, Ceija Stojka said with tears in her eyes: "I never would have imagined when I was in Auschwitz that my artwork would some day come to America. America has always been for me the main liberator of the concentration camps, and I am grateful and honored for this opportunity to exhibit my work there."

The exhibition of Ceija Stojka's works will travel to Pacific University and Sonoma State University before completing its tour at the West Branch Gallery in November of 2009.