Soshana Afroyim
1927 - 2015, Vienna, Austria
Abstract Composition, 1968
Original Hand-Signed Mixed Media on Wood -
Dated 1968
Artist's Biography:
Soshana
Afroyim (September 1, 1927 – December 9, 2015) was an
Austrian painter of the Modernism period. Soshana was a full-time
artist and traveled frequently, exhibiting her work internationally. During her
journeys, she portrayed many well-known personalities and her art developed in
different directions. Her early period artwork was largely naturalistic in
nature, showing landscapes and portraits. Later her style
developed towards abstract art, strongly influenced by Asian calligraphy.
Life
Childhood
Soshana
Afroyim was born in 1927 as Susanne Schüller in Vienna into a Jewish
middle-class family. Her younger brother Maximilian was born two years later.
Her father, Fritz Schüller, owned a cufflink factory and her mother,
Margarethe Schüller, was a sculptor. Shoshana first went to the Rudolf
Steiner School, but soon changed to the alternative Schwarzwald School.
She started to paint and draw at a very young age. Her mother supported
Shoshana's creativity and collected her works.
Fleeing
Vienna
At the age
of eleven, Shoshana witnessed the annexation of Austria. "I
watched Hitler's triumphant entry to Vienna. I remember well how I looked
out of the window (...) and saw how he was welcomed by the cheering crowd as he
drove in his open car (...). I turned cold and was horribly frightened."
The family
decided to leave Austria. Fritz Schüller, who had been born in Brno, had a
Czech passport and left the country first. Margarethe, Shoshana and Maximilian
fled to Switzerland, then Paris, where Fritz had waited for them and
finally in 1939 they reached London, where they would stay two years.
Shoshana attended the Northwood College and in 1940 the Chelsea
Polytechnic School, where she had painting and drawing lessons and learned
about fashion design. Due to the Blitz, the Schueller family had to
take refuge in air-raid shelters almost every night. The experience
was very stressful for Soshana. She expressed her stress and emotions through
drawings.
Emigration
to America
Soshana's
father fled to Spain and via Tangier, followed by New York. In 1941 he
managed to get an affidavit for his family and booked three tickets
for the S.S. Madura, the last civil ship that would leave Europe. In 1941,
Soshana, her mother and her brother arrived at Ellis Island. In New
York City. She enrolled at Washington Irving High School and attended
painting classes under the guidance of artist Beys Afroyim, future
plaintiff-appellant in Afroyim v. Rusk.
Travelling
through America
At the age
of 17, she travelled against her parents' will with Beys Afroyim through
America. To earn their living during these travels, they painted writers,
musicians, statesmen and scientists like Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, Otto
Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Lion Feuchtwanger, Theodore Dreiser and Hanns
Eisler.
When the United
Nations Conference on International Organization was opened in May 1945
in San Francisco, the couple portrayed well-known delegates, such as the
deputy chairman of the UdSSR national planning commission Vasilij
Vasilevič Kuznecov.
In 1945,
Soshana and Afroyim married. In 1946. their only child Amos was born in New
York.
Cuba and
the first large exhibition
Because of
Beys' activities within the Communist Party, the couple left the USA and
spent nine months in Cuba, where Soshana had her first exhibition in 1948
at the Circulo de Bellas Artes, Havana. From that time on she used the
name "Soshana", the nom de plume Afroyims gave her, meaning
"Lily" in Hebrew (the more common spelling is Shoshana - שושנה). After a short stay in the USA, they
moved to Europe and eventually to Israel.
The family
was financially poor and Soshana didn't want to live her life as a traditional
housewife. They divorced in 1950 with mutual consent. She returned with her son
to Vienna in 1951.
Vienna and
Paris
Back to
Vienna
Soshana
returned to Vienna with her son and eventually gave Beys full custody. In
1951, she enrolled at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and in
1952 to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where she painted under the
guidance of Prof. Sergius Pauser, Albert Paris Gütersloh and Prof.
Herbert Boeckl. Unhappy with academic art practice, she relocated in Paris,
France in 1952.
Paris
Upon
relocation to Paris, Soshana lived and worked in the former studio of André
Derain. She eventually moved into another studio at Impasse Ronsin next
to Brâncuși. She became very close with the artist, whom she described as
loving her "like a daughter." Later, she lived in another studio
that was previously owned by Gauguin.
Soshana
struggled financially as a full-time artist in Paris. She described it as a
"bittersweet time." She became acquainted with the artists Kupka, Auguste
Herbin, Ossip Zadkine, César, Pignon, Bazaine, Max
Ernst, Yves Klein, Alexander Calder, Wifredo Lam, Sam
Francis, Jean-Paul Sartre, Affandi, Lain Bangdel, and Marc
Chagall. She considered Alberto Giacometti one of her best friends. In
1953, Soshana met the Zurich gallery owner Max G. Bollag, who became a major
promoter of her work.
In Paris,
Soshana had multiple exhibitions in the André Weil Gallery and Salon
d'Automne, the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles and the Salon de Mai, where
she met Pablo Picasso for the first time. He invited her to visit him
at his Villa in Vallauris and drew a portrait of her in 1954.
World
travel
In 1956,
Soshana traveled through Asia. She had organised herself an invitation by
for a Chinese Ministry of Culture to exhibit in Beijing and on her
way to China, she visited India, Thailand, Cambodia and Japan, where became interested
in and inspired by Indian philosophy, Hinduism and Buddhism. She
was impressed by the art of calligraphy and learned art techniques on rice
paper from Buddhist monks in Kyoto and Chinese
painters in Hangzhou. The art of calligraphy became formative for her
painting style. In 1957 she arrived in Beijing, where her exhibition took place
in the Emperor's palace.
In 1959
Soshana travelled through Africa, where she portrayed Albert
Schweitzer in Lambaréné, eventually returning to Paris.
In the
same year she became acquainted with the Italian artist Pinot Gallizio. They
worked together in Paris and Alba del Piemonte, Italy. In a letter
written by Gallizio, to his gallerist Otto and Heicke Van de Loo in Munich,
he announced '20 paintings were made in September 1959 in Paris, together with
Soshana', adding 'results formidable'.
Through
Gallizio, Soshana got in contact with the COBRA group, among others
to Karel Appel and Asger Jorn. But because she is a woman,
they did not accept her as a full member of the art group.
Instead, Soshana started a collaboration with the O´Hana Gallery in London,
where she had three exhibitions in 1959, 1960 and 1963. In 1962, she had an
exhibition at Château Grimaldi in Antibes.
Mexico
In 1964,
Soshana traveled to Mexico for various exhibitions, living many
months in Cuernavaca, known as the "City of Eternal Spring" and
a refuge for many artists and intellectuals of the 1960s. She became friends
with Mexican artists such as Rufino Tamayo, Siqueiros, José Luis
Cuevas and Mathias Goeritz. In 1965, she met Adolph Gottlieb for
the first time and later in New York, they developed a deep friendship. In
1966, an exhibition of Soshana's work took place in the Palacio de Bellas
Artes.
Second
journey around the world
During the
course of her second trip around the world in 1968, Soshana visited the South
Seas, the Caribbean, Thailand, Bali, Australia, India, Sikkim, Nepal, Afghanistan, Iran and Israel.
In 1969, the Chogyal entrusted her with painting portraits of the
king and the queen of Sikkim and the same year she became a member of the Theosophical
Society.
In 1972,
Soshana moved to Jerusalem, where she planned four exhibitions in the Old Jaffa
Gallery. But when the Yom Kippur War broke out, they were all
cancelled. Soshana left Israel and moved in 1974 to New York.
New York
From 1974
to 1985, she lived and worked in New York City. Before she moved into her
studio in Queens, she stayed in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, where
she was able to pay her rent with paintings. Soshana knew many people of the
New York art scene, like Mark Rothko, Francesco Clemente, Joseph
Hirshhorn and her close friend Adolph Gottlieb. Despite gaining
international attention for her work and exhibiting frequently, Soshana felt
unsatisfied with her living situation and uncomfortable in New York. She
returned to Vienna in 1985.
Return to
Vienna
Upon her
return to Vienna, she continued to travel until she had to stop due to health
problems in 2005. Thereafter, she moved to a nursing home and
continued to paint. She died on December 9, 2015. Her son, Amos, serves as her
manager and promoter. In 2008, the Austrian National Library took over
her creative estate, comprising manuscripts, photos, letters, documents etc.
and made it available for public consultation.
Work
Early years
In her
early work, Soshana links individual elements from the tradition of Fauvism with
the compact, hermetic view of American Realism and is noticeably
imbued with a spirit of youthful insouciance.
Soshana
received her first lasting artistic influences at an art school in New
York City, starting at the age of fourteen. Before she started to create
abstract paintings in the early 1950s, she painted in a style of colorful,
archaizing Realism. A style, which is connected to the political art in the
period around 1945, as a minor transition phase between the earlier and more
famous Realisms of the 1930s (New Objectivity, Verismo, Precisionism, Magical
Realism, etc.) and the abstract painting of the 1950s. Already the bombings of
the London Blitz, had triggered artistic reflections in the drawing of the
budding artist Soshana. Her teacher in New York and later husband Beys Afroyim,
who was a committed Communist, led her much deeper into narrative art and
contemporary Social Realism. Afroyim and Soshana were very involved
in the political activistic New York art circles, consisting mainly of European
immigrants.
On her
travels with Beys Afroyim through the USA and later Cuba, Israel and Europe,
Soshana painted street sceneries (e.g. Old Street in NY City, 1943,
or Street in L.A., 1945), factory workers (e.g. the series My
Sweatshop in New York, 1944), people she met on the way (e.g. Two
Black Youths, 1944, Young Man with a Straw, 1945) and many
landscapes. Overmore she portrayed many artists and politicians (e.g. Franz
Werfel on his deadbed, 1945, or Otto Klemperer, 1945).
These portraits reflect the critical intellectual environment, the Afroyim
couple moved in. All of the persons depicted have a distinctly melancholic
look and are all either frontal or three-quarter-view portraits, which focus
completely on the person represented. From the perspective of bold Social Realism,
she interpreted the psychology of European immigrants in Los Angeles and
European delegates to the founding conference of the United Nations in
San Francisco. Soshanas working-class milieu studies on the other hand show a
high affinity with famous regionalists and socialrealists such
as Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, the Soyer Brothers or
the Mexican Muralists José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera.
Up to
1948, Soshana remained faithful to a compact, colorful and expressive Social
Realism. In these early paintings, figures are modeled roughly with a few broad
brush strokes without any detail; landscapes and citiscapes always open up to
the beholder from a slightly elevated point of view. The scenes appear mostly
in a neutral light, with neither houses nor figures casting shadows, yet these
landscapes with the saturated application of colors, exude an almost cheerful
mood, which can be interpreted as an echo of Fauvism. Soshana's paintings of
European Alpine landscapes, which she began creating upon her return to Vienna
in 1951, already show her first steps into Art Informel.
Paris,
Asia and the Art Informel
When
Soshana moved to Paris in 1952, she became part of the so-called École de
Paris, a representative of the Paris School.
Influenced
by the intense contact with other artists from all over the world, Soshana
turned her style from Expressive Realism into the Informel. Step by step she
eliminated the object from her paintings and followed suit with the
international art jargon of the time after 1945. Her Paris paintings are being
connected with Abstract Expressionism and compared by experts to
those of Jackson Pollock, Georges Mathieu and Hans Hartung.
From the
second half of the 1950s, Soshanas works increasingly show informel characteristics.
Like so many other artists of her time, she was fascinated by Asian calligraphic aesthetics
and the philosophy behind it. She had many Asian friends in Paris (e.g. Tobashi,
Fujino, Walasse Ting) and made her first experiments with calligraphic
techniques. But the decisive impulse for an intense engagement in studies of
traditional Far Eastern art was her first journey to Asia in 1957. She learned
how to use Chinese ink on paper and soon applied the new technique on her oil
paintings.
Although
she devoted a big part of her work to the abstract art, Soshana never
completely gave up the representational and kept interweaving
occasional figures into her paintings.
Mexico and
the Abstract Surrealism
Many of
Soshana's paintings contain Surrealistic motives, like an infinite horizon,
expanded endless spaces, in which mysterious shapes, masks or heads seem to
float. The use of a Surrealistic language is due to Soshana's travels to
Mexico. In 1960 she made her first visit to that country, which was – due to
its political antifaschist position - at that time particularly appealing for
artists and intellectuals from Europe.
Soshana is
one of those "children of the language of painting in Mexico", a
"pintora filomexicana". All her life she had a deep and magic
connection with the country, which is also reflected in her work. The paintings
she created in Mexico or are reminiscent of Mexico have a very special
character, they hold within the typical flamboyant colors and the contrasts of
that country. Soshana refined a technique, she once had developed by chance in
her Paris studio years before, when it had rained through the leaky glass roof
onto her watercolours and dried, leaving bright spots with dark edges. Soshana
began to imitate this effect with turpentine on her oil paintings,
the result was a "kind of drip painting in reverse" which
resembled the structure of liquid crystal, as she describes herself:
"Some biochemists say that my paintings resemble what you see, when you
look into a microscope".
Loneliness
and Pain
A lonely
figure, a dark silhouette or a single head between heavy bars, surrounded by
wild strokes inside the perspective of a tunnel – motives like these run like a
red thread through Soshanas whole work and have earned her a reputation as
"Cassandra of the canvas, a prophetess of doom, an artist of the
Atomic Age, a painter of anxiety and loneliness, of disease and dementia, of
unemployment, pain, and death." (The Mainichi, Japan 1957)
Political
works
Soshana
was seriously affected by political events since her childhood. At the age of
11, she watched Hitler marching into Vienna, later the family had to
flee from the Nazi regime. Soshana used drawing and painting as an outlet to
deal with these traumatic events, like in a drawing, she called
"Hitler as Cloun". Themes like The Cold War, the Yom Kippur
War, the atomic age or terrorism can be found over and over
again in Soshana's Oeuvre. When she returned to Vienna in 1985, she worked up
the time of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. During Kurt Waldheim's
election campaign in 1987/88, she made a series of paintings and collages, in
which she incorporated Nazi propaganda texts. Soshana also painted motive
cycles of the wars in Yugoslavia, the attacks on the World Trade
Center or the wars on Iraq.
Late work
Reminiscences
on earlier series of works and a process of compression can be clearly noted in
Soshana's late work.
From the
2000s on, her paintings get a very different character, the structures are quieter,
the colours clearer and the forms simpler. The motives sometimes even seem
childish and naive, these pictures are little riddles full of irony and
phantasy.
Reception
Soshana in
the context of Austrian Modernism
Soshana
worked internationally in U.S., Israel, France, Mexico, South America, India,
Japan, China, Africa, etc. That's why she largely has been denied recognition
within the context of 20th-century Austrian art. The foreign press
paradoxically always has seen her as an Austrian painter. Today she is
often labelled as a cosmopolitan, a globetrotter, whose work is influenced
by experiences on all the continents.
"...ranging
in style from more or less abstract impressionism to tachistic calligraphy, Soshana´s
paintings represent a diary of her travels showing, page by page, the
impressions and visual experiences evoked on her journeys." (Pierre
Restany, art historian and art critic, Paris 1969)
Soshana's
position as a woman in the art world
"A
woman who creates art lives in a test situation, and the examiner can be anyone
at all. Because every man and every woman 'knows' what a woman is; therefore
every man and every woman can claim the right to reduce the assessment of a woman's
art to what she is like as a woman."
At
Soshana's time, an art career for a woman was by no means a matter of course.
The goal of being able to support oneself by one's own art production seemed –
not only for women – nearly impossible, which is why many aspiring women artists
completed practical training in some other profession parallel to their art
schooling. In most cases it was the teaching profession, which they practiced
in art-related spheres. But Soshana chose her own independent self-determined
and emancipated way, in an era in which the legal implementation of equal
rights of men and women and equal opportunities to work in any profession was
simply unthinkable.
In a
letter to the co-author of her autobiography, she writes about her role as a
pioneer: "This is why I want to write this book, to say what a
struggle I went through to be a woman and an artist and be maybe like 100 years
ahead of the times we actually live in.”
A good
example of how hard it was as a woman artist on the market, is the fact, that
even a revolutionary artist group like CoBrA, refused her as a member out
of sexistic reasons. And the gallerist of her colleague Pinot Gallizio,
with whom she made many paintings, did not want her to sign with Gallizio on
the same work.
In the
manuscript of her autobiography, Soshana writes about the rejection she
encountered also by other gallery owners: "The owner of the Galerie
de France told me in no uncertain terms, that they did not like to take woman
artists on contract, it was considered too risky. A woman could get married,
have children and abandon her career. Twenty years of publicity and a long-term
financial investment in a female artist would be ruined over-night. Since this
did not apply in my case, I felt the discrimination against women all the
more."
For a very
long time, the role of a woman in arts was to be an inspiring muse, not to be a
painter herself. But Soshana understood that she had to develop her own
individual, unique artist image and knew very well how to practice successful
self-management. She spread exciting, mysterious stories of her life and
created a hype around her person. Her encounters with Picasso were
told again and again - especially the story of the day, when she visited him in
his villa in Vallauris, to be portrayed and the refused his invitation to stay
with him. Soshana tried to use Picassos name to get more attention. The planned
booktitel of a never finished autobiographical novel would have referred to
that event: The Girl who said No to Picasso.
Still
Soshana later mentioned very often that she was torn between her pride of
having said "No" and the regret, not to have chosen the easier and
safe way at the side of a man.
Awards
· March
2008: Österreichische Post (Austrian Post) issued the commemorative
stamp "Soshana" in the series "Modern Art in Austria."
· 2
September 2009: Gold Merit Award of the Province of Vienna
· 27 May
2010: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art
Exhibitions
1948 Circulo
de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba
1953 Galerie
André Weil Paris, France
1957 Group
Exhibition, Drian Gallery - Marble Arch, London
1957 New
Vision Centre Gallery - Marble Arch, London
1957 Pietrantonio,
New York
1957 New
Vision Centre Gallery, Marble Arch, London
1957 “IV Exposition d´Oeuvres de Peintres et Sculpteurs Juifs”, Group Exhibition, Club Sioniste de L´O.S.G.I. Paris
1958 Henri
Lidchi Art Gallery, Johannesburg
1958 Stubing & Greenfield, New York
1958 L'Art et La Mode/E.J. Rivère, Paris
1958 Edouard Loeb, Société D´art
Saint Germain des Prés, Paris
1958 Modern
Art Centre Max G.Bollag, Zürich
1959 Hartert
Galleries, New York
1960 Group
exhibition, O´Hana Galler, London
1960 O´Hana Galler, London
1960 Museu
de Arte de Sao Paulo
1960 Barcinski
Ltda, Rio de Janeiro
1960 O´Hana
Gallery - 13 Carlos Place, London
1961 Bodley
Gallery, New York
1962 Musée
D'Antibes, Chateau Grimaldi, Cannes
1962 Galerie
de la Madeleine, Bruxelles
1963 Galerie
Max G. Bollag, Modern Art Centre - Novelle Galerie, Zurich
1963 O'Hana
Gallery, London
1963 Zaal
C.A.W., Antwerpen
1963 Group
exhibition, Galerie de Presbourg, Paris
1964 Silvermine
Guild of Artists, New Canaan, Connecticut
1964 Henri
Gallery, Alexandria, Virginia
1964 Robert
Rosinek, New York
1964 Krasner
Gallery, New York
1965 Verlé
Gallery, West Hartford, Connecticut
1965 Galerie
Max G. Bollag, Modern Art Centre, Zürich
1965 Galerie
Wolfgang Gurlitt, München
1965 "VI
Salon International”, Paris - Essonne 1965 (Group Exhibition)
1965 Kulturamt
Charlottenburg - Charlottenburg, Germany
1966 El
Instituto Nacional De Bellas Artes, Mexico
1966 Kiko
Galleries of Houston
1966 Palacio
De Bellas Artes, Mexico
1967 Galerie
Max G. Bollag, Modern Art Centre, Zürich
1967 Ruth
White Gallery, New York
1968 Soshana and Doris Rücker, Galerie Assindia, Essen
1969 Galerie
Max G. Bollag, Modern Art Centre, Zürich
1969 Galerie
Moos Inc., Montreal
1969 Galerie
Max G. Bollag, Modern Art Centre - Werdemühlstrasse 11, Züric
1971 Galerie
du Vignoble Saint-Saphorin en Lavaux - 1813 Saint-Saphori
1972 Max
G. Bollag - Modern Art Centre, Zürich
1973 Old
Jaffa Gallery, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel
1975 Christine
Pease Gallery, Edgartown, Massachuset
1976 Group
exhibition, "Galerie Art-Club "Zollweid", Reuss/Sins,
Switzerland
1976 Max
G. Bollag - Modern Art Centre, Zürich
1977 Kirby
Gallery, Houston Texas
1977 Gallery
306, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
1977 My Friends and I, Gallery Bond Street, Great Neck, NY
1979 Randall
Galleries, New York
1982 Soshana and Grete Margaret Schuller, Horizon Galleries, New
York
1987 Group
exhibition, Galerie Prisma, Vienna
1988 Galerie
Prisma, Vienna
1988 Galerie
Gabriele Glück GmbH - 4600 Wels
1988 Group
exhibition, Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Sport, Austria -
Gedenkjahr 1938 (Group exhibition)
1989 Lyra
Galerie, Gars am Kamp, Austria
1990 Galerie
Lyra, Baron u. Baronin Geymüller - Schloß Hollenburg/Dona
1990 Galerie
ABC & Galerie Lyra, Obernberg/Inn
1993 Galerie
Prisma, Vienna
1995 Group
exhibition, Galerie Prisma - Jüdisches Gemeindezentrum, Vienna (Group
exhibition)
1997 Palais
Pálffy, Retrospektive Gemälde u. Zeichnungen 1945 – 1997, Vienna
1998 "50 Jahre Israel -
Über-Leben"
1999 Group
exhibition, Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz, Austria
2000 La
Galerie Dumont 18, Genève
2000 Galerie
Prisma, Vienna
2000 Kanzleizentrum
Salzburg, Salzburg
2003 “Paris 1945 bis 1965,” Group exhibition, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz
2005 Alix
Frank Rechtsanwälte KEG, Vienna
2006 Galerie
Prisma, Vienna
2006 Jüdisches
Museum Wien - Palais Eskeles, Vienna
2007 Galerie
Prisma, Vienna
2007 “Abstract
Narrative – A Collective Exhibition”, Agora Gallery, Chelsea, New York
2007 Gallery
Gora, Montreal QC Canada
2007 The
Art Gallery, Coonabarabran NSW Australia
2007 Givatayim
Theater, Tel Aviv, Israel
2008 Dada
Art Gallery, Philadelphia
2008 forum
austriaco di cultura - Galleria Tondinelli:00184 Roma Via Quattro Fontane
2008 Instituto
Cultural Mexicano, Vienna
2008 Galeria Municipal de Arte Pancho
Fierro, Lima, Peru
2008 Yeshiva
University Museum, New York
2008 bifeb-The
Federal Institute for Adult Education - Srtobl/Austria
2008 ARC
Gallery, Chicago, IL
2008 Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center,
Ramallah, Westbank, Palestine
2009 National
Bank of Serbia, Belgrade
2009 Highgate
Gallery, London
2009 Centro
Cultural Isidro Fabela, Mexico City
2009 The
Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles
2009 Galerie
Böck, Vienna
2010 “Soshana - Ein Leben für die Malerei”, Prisma Galerie, Vienna
2010 Soshana -
Book Presentation, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
2010 Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
2011 "Die Rückkehr der alten Geister"/"Return of the Old
Spirits" (Group exhibition), Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
2011 Astry
Gallery, Sofia, Bulgari
2011 Soshana Retrospektive, Galerie Bollag, Zürich
2012 Group
exhibition, Galleria Martano, Torino
2012 Group
exhibition, Wikam Wiener Künstlerhaus, Vienna
2012 Galerie
Lilly's Art Wien, Vienna
2012 GG68,
Vienna
2012 Wikam
Wiener Künstlerhaus, Galerie Szaal, Vienna
2013 Wikam
Szaal Gallery - Schloss Laxenburg, Austria
2013 Wikam
Wiener Künstlerhaus & Szaal Gallery - Künstlerhaus & Schottenring 10
2013 Soshana & other emigrants, Austrian National Library, Vienna
2013 Galicia
Jewish Museum, Krakow, Poland
2013 Gallery
of the National Museum Bahrain, Manama, Bahrain
2013 Gallery
Art Couture in Dubai - Al Badia Golf Club, InterContinental, Dubai Festival
City
2013 Al-Babtain
Library in Kuwait, Kuwait
2014 Wikam
Wien - Wiener Künstlerhaus; Galerie Szaal, Vienna
2014 Soshana with Pinot Gallizio, Piero Simondo, Sandro Cherchi and Franco
Garelli, Galleria del Ponto
Turin, Torino
2014 Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
2015 Kunsthaus
Deutschvilla Strobl - 5350 Strobl am Wolfgangsee
2015 WIKAM,
Galerie Szaal, im Plais Ferstel, Vienna
2015 Gallery
Lendnine, Graz
2015 Sotheby's
Benefiz Auktion – Semperdepot, Vienna
2016 Galerie
Art Couture Dubai, UAE
2016 Im
Kinsky - im Kinksy
2017 “The Imaginist Bauhaus, Soshana/Cobra Group”, Kunsthall Oslo, Norway (Group exhibition)
Museums
· Museum of
Modern Art, Paris
· Museum of
Modern Art, Rome
· Museum of
Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro
· Museum of
Modern Art, São Paulo
· Museum of
Modern Art, Mexico
· Museum of
Modern Art, New Delhi
· Museum of
Fine Arts, Santa Fé
· Bezalel
Museum, Jerusalem
· The Israel
Museum, Jerusalem
· Tel Aviv Museum of Art
· Jewish
Museum, New York
· Leo Baeck
Institute, New York
· New York
Hospital, New York
· Stamford
Museum, Connecticut
· Salisbury
Art Gallery, Rhodesia
· Farleigh Dickenson
University, New Jersey
· Hirschhorn
Museum, Washington, DC
· Musée
Matisse, Nice
· Musée
Picasso, Antibes
· Petit
Palais, Geneva
· Neue
Galerie, Linz, Austria
· Oberbank
Wien
Publications
· Karin
Jilek: Die Künstlerin Soshana "A broken childhood"(The
artist Soshana - "A broken childhood")
in:
Fetz/Fingernagel/Leibnitz/Petschar/Pfunder (eds.): Nacht über
Österreich. Der Anschluss 1938 – Flucht und Vertreibung (Night over
Austria. The annexation 1938 - Flight and Expulsion). Publication on the
occasion of an exhibition with the same title at the State Hall of the Austrian
National Library, 7.3. - 28.4.2013, Residenz Publishing House 2013
· Lisa
Bolyos, Katharina Morawek (eds.): Diktatorpuppe zerstört, Schaden gering.
Kunst und Geschichtspolitik im Postnazismus
(Dictator
doll destroyed, damage low. Arts and Political History in the Postnazi Era). A
book about artists, scientists and activists in search of cultural strategies
to disturb Postnazism. On page 50/51: A text about Soshana, Mandelbaum
Publishing House 2012, ISBN 978-3-85476-391-8
· Birgit
Prunner: Soshana. Das Malerische Oevre der 1950er und 1960er Jahre im
Licht der internationalen Avantgarde, Diploma Thesis History of Art,
University Vienna 2011
· Amos Schueller,
Angelica Bäumer (eds.): Soshana. Life and Work. Comprehensive
monograph on Soshanas life and work, contributing authors: Matthias Boeckl,
Afnan Al-Jaderi, Christian Kircher, Marlene Streeruwitz, Martina Pippal,
Christian Kloyber et al., Springer, Vienna, New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-7091-0274-9
· Martina
Gabriel, Amos Schueller (eds.): Soshana. An Overview of Soshana's
Works, contributing authors: Peter Baum, Max Bollag, Walter Koschatzky, et
al., Vienna 2005
· Amos
Schueller (ed.): Soshana. Paintings and Drawings 1945 - 1997,
exhibition catalog of the Retrospective 1997, Palais Pallfy, Vienna 1997
· United
Artists Ltd. (ed.): Soshana, comprehensive illustrated book,
contributing authors: Jean Cassou, Michel Georges-Michel, Waldemar George,
Pierre Restany, Tel Aviv 1973
· Fetz/
Fingernagel/ Leibnitz/ Petschar/ Pfundner (ed.): Night over Austria.
The annexation 1938 - Flight and Expulsion, Exhibitioncatalogue to Night
over Austria. The annexation 1938 - Flight and Expulsion, at the Austrian
National Library in Vienna, (7.3.-28.4.2013), Residenz Verlag, Vienna 2013
Film
Everywhere
alone. The Artist Soshana (Documentary: 45 min); direction
and production: Werner Müller. Based on Soshana's biography, filmed in Vienna,
Paris, Mexico and New York, the film reflects the story of the 20th century. It
contains interviews with the artist herself, with friends, acquaintances and
contemporaries. The documentary about Soshanas life was broadcast in December
2013 on 3Sat.
Miscellaneous
· March 2008
Presentation of the special stamp "Soshana" in the series
"Modern Art in Austria"
· In
September 2011 seven Soshana paintings were stolen from a private collection in
Vienna.
· Soshana
worked for several years on her autobiography with co-author Toby Falk. It was
never finished nor published. The manuscript is in possession of her son Amos
Schueller.
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