Ceija Stojka. This has happened

The Reina Sofía Museum is hosting the first monographic exhibition devoted to the Austrian painter of Romany origins, Ceija Stojka. A collection of her best paintings that reflect her memory and the persecution suffered by gypsies in Central Europe during the 1930s and 1940s.  

Ceija Stojka was a painter, writer and musician born in Steiermark (Austria) in 1933. She belonged to the Lovari gypsy ethnicity. Following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, her family suffered racial persecution. She and her mother were sent to the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen, witnessing the horror of those places. Her father was sent to Dachau, where he was killed.

After the Second World War, in 1986 Ceija began to experiment with literature, music and painting to recover her childhood memories and particularly those of her time in the Nazi concentration camps. As a self-taught artist, she painted on paper, card or oil and used acrylic materials that she applied to her creations with a brush or directly with her fingers.

Having died in 2013, her legacy consists of more than 1,000 drawings and paintings which are in private collections and museums in America and Europe.  She is also the author of four books and was a leading spokesperson for the claims in favour of the recognition of gypsy genocide and the rights of its people.

Image Credit:

Ceija Stojka. Untitled. Acrylic on Card. 50 x 70 cm. Hojda and Nuna Stojka Collection, Vienna